A question about the Nikon Premier 8x32 Roofs (1 Viewer)

ceasar · Sep 12, 2011

I got an 8 x 32 SE (SN 505xxx) in Feb. 2008. Since then I have compared it (in a casual manner) many times with my 8 x 30 EII (500xxx) which I have had since at least 2002. I always came away with the conclusion that the SE was brighter. I have noticed this mostly when looking into the canopy of the trees not far off my deck at various times of the day.

Bob

elkcub · Sep 12, 2011

JRM,

I largely agree with your thoughts, but what does "... 1 mag range" mean? Does it mean magnitude? I associate the term with astronomy but never used it myself.

Thanks,
Ed

RJM · Sep 12, 2011

Yes Ed. That was the unit of measure I was refering to. Most of the optics research I have read is astronomy related so speaking in units of magnitude is comfortable for me instead of lumens, nits, candelas, etc. I assume we are only concerned about brightness in twilight/near dark or dark conditions too when our pupils adaptation response allows binoculars with exit pupils > ~3mm to "shine".

ronh · Sep 12, 2011

Henry,
Thanks for this experiment. To learn the most from it, however, we neee you need to clarify something, and pound on the software a little bit more.

Was the camera aperture safely larger than 4mm, and are you sure all the binocular exit beam was going through that hole?

The histograms tell us the relative red, blue and green intensities across the image, I guess. But, the tops are chopped off, so you can't see the color balance in the bright part. If you could rescale them so the tops of the curves were visible, they would tell us something interesting. The relative heights of the colors would show color balance, and the green by itself would pretty much indicate daytime brightness.
Ron

elkcub · Sep 12, 2011

RJM said:
Yes Ed. That was the unit of measure I was refering to. Most of the optics research I have read is astronomy related so speaking in units of magnitude is comfortable for me instead of lumens, nits, candelas, etc. I assume we are only concerned about brightness in twilight/near dark conditions too when our pupils adaptation response allows binoculars with exit pupils > ~3mm to "shine".

Thanks, RJM, that explains it. My orientation is the photopic world as you can see. |8)|

Ed

typo · Sep 12, 2011

Henry,

Thanks for the pictures. This time the colour balance seems a little different. Left seems even stronger in the green, and slightly less red than before. The other two seem closer, perhaps slightly warmer than neutral, but maybe a little deficient in green. Those two still seem different but my eyes aren't good enough to see it.

I don't know what it means. Maybe it is due to the camera, the changes in illuminating light, my eyes or something else entirely. Maybe you know the transmission spectra for these pairs? It wouldn't be unusual for older pairs to have a strong green bias, and newer Nikons to have biphasic peaks would it?

David

henry link · Sep 12, 2011

I appear to have gotten myself into something a little more involved than I thought. Ron (Surveyor) has pointed out to me that the steps of increasing brightness are not too accurate in the images I posted. I'm working on improving that and hope to have something better to post soon. The order of increasing brightness won't change, but hopefully the relative sizes of the steps and the color bias will be more accurately imaged. I agree with David that green/yellow is a better description of the single layer coated E's color bias.

Ron,

I used a 50mm f/1.4 lens stopped down to f/2.8 to be certain I had plenty of camera aperture for the exit pupils.

I can't seem to do anything about the clipping of the iPhoto histograms at the top, but I think the last ones I made are more informative. I'll post them along with their photos.

Henry

ronh · Sep 12, 2011

Henry, never mind my request to rescale the histograms, I was looking at them all wrong although it is still to make much quantitative out of them with the colors overlaid. But the histograms give the impression that the binoculars differed more than I would have expected, and by more than the visual impression from the first photographs. This is just idle complaining you understand, not a request for action.
Ron

RJM · Sep 12, 2011

Henry, my only suggestions to your testing method is to illuminate your target with a "daylight" bulb of known color temp., use the D40's Custom White Balance (if paper is white) and set the Picture Control to Neutral. Don't choose B&W. Oh, and make sure no external light can reflect off the eyepiece into the lens.

Or you could just save yourself the effort of testing further. No matter the result, some folk here will always see it differently!3

henry link · Sep 13, 2011

The images below show my most recent efforts to image binocular "brightness". Ron (Surveyor) has pretty much convinced me that my backyard methods are only good as very rough representations, so they should not be taken as proper measurements. They do appear, at least, to be good enough to sort these three binoculars in the correct order of their relative image brightness and give a pretty accurate picture of their color biases. The left image shows the 8x30 E - left bar, 8x30 EII - middle bar and 8x32 SE - right bar. The bars are superimposed on an image of the same piece of lined paper taken directly through the camera for purposes of showing the color biases of the binoculars.

The histograms were generated in iPhoto on my iMac. The top histogram is the 8x30 E, the next down is the 8x30 EII, then the 8x32 SE. The direct photo of the paper is at the bottom. Luminosity increases from left to right.

Binoculars with perfect light transmission would generate a histogram that looks just like the one on the bottom. Notice that each binocular is shifted a little to the left of the bottom histogram indicating less than 100% transmission with the "E" shifted the most and the SE the least (this includes the exit pupil advantage). The thin red line on the right of all three binoculars indicates that the red channel is elevated compared to the green in all three. The blue channel is shifted to the left compared to green in all three, indicating that blue transmission is down compared to green, but the "E" shows more shift than the other two indicating a more severe loss of transmission in the blue. So, however crude they may be it appears that these histograms can reveal something of interest.

typo · Sep 13, 2011

Henry,

Fascinating. Specially on the relative blue performance. Does your software generate any numerical output such as peak channel, mean, weighted mean or summation?

Many thanks,

David

Surveyor · Sep 13, 2011

Well done Henry. I am a big fan of “proportional” methods of comparison.

If the known trouble sources of errors are controlled well enough to assume they are approximately the same in all the measurements, then the results, though not accurate, may be considered proportional.

In my email I had not considered the underlying photo. If you change the 255 value to about 206 in the examples, the results look very representative indeed.

Intriguing idea, worth some time and experimenting.

Best

Surveyor · Sep 13, 2011

David,

I don’t know what Henry has available from the original photos but I have attached some data from his posted composite to get a basic idea of converting the channel data to luminance values.

The sets, from top to bottom, are left, middle, right and overall.

It may help you a little.

David Swain · Sep 13, 2011

Bravo, Henry. Very compelling results that have broad applicability to many of our discussions.

David

ronh · Sep 13, 2011

Thinking that Surveyor might have over-weighted the red and blue, as far as estimating daytime brightness, I compared the right hand edges of just the the green peaks with a mm scale. But, my results agree with his within about a percent, my derived brightnesses being:
naked camera: 100%
SE: 93.7%
E2: 89.7%
E: 86.8%

Now these sound about like the expected "transmissions", or whatever the term for it is. So, what happened to the aperture advantage of the SE, which ought to give it 14% extra right off the top?

Henry, have you reduced the camera aperture so that no longer comes into play? Just trying to understand how far we can usefully push this, since you have done such a nice job on it.

This is exciting, really. This might be the homeboy measurement of transmission we have been waiting for, Henry!
RonH

henry link · Sep 13, 2011

Ron,

Thanks for trying to put some legitimate numbers on my images. The problem is that the luminance value of the underlying photo is what you would certainly consider to be the worst sort of approximation. I just tried to set the 50mm camera lens to the same f/12.5 focal ratio as the SE/camera combination. My standards are so low that I was just happy to see that it was a reasonable amount brighter than the binocular photos. I included it as a reference for color bias.

This series of photos seems to me to be too closely grouped, given the old coatings on the E and the larger exit pupil of the SE. There ought to be more like 15% steps between the binoculars, as there seems to be in some of the other attempts I made. I haven't been able to achieve good consistency, except that the brightness order of the binoculars never changes.

Henry

typo · Sep 13, 2011

Ron,Henry,

I'll need a bit more time to absorb the numbers, but with a quick look they do seem very useful. Excellent!

I'm particularly excited as I've been trying to get a handle on colour, contrast and apparent vs. real 'brightness'. Potentially, a relatively simple method of comparative analysis.

Ron, do you have any thoughts on the potential errors for this approach vs. quantitative methods?

David

brocknroller · Sep 13, 2011

NDhunter said:
Brock:

I did my testing with the ser. # 504, SE 8x32. My new 550 has been tucked away.

I may try to do some more testing this week, and see if the latest coatings on
the SE make any difference here. I know I noticed the coatings color changes when I first inspected the 550.

I don't know what to make of the photos of Henrys. I only know what I see
with my own eyes, and the EII seemed better able to view objects at low light.
It seems Sancho found much the same.
I wonder if it is a color bias in the coatings, much like the transmission curves put on transmission differences.
Allbinos uses a spectophotometer, to test transmission, and the website explains their testing methods, from 380-900 nm. I have studied the results on some binoculars I own, and can agree with the results.

Jerry

Jerry,

If the SE transmits more light, it's not a difference in brightness that allows us to see more detail in low light with the EII.

I think one of the reasons we can see more detail in the EII in low light is due to the color bias in the different coatings used in early vs. late SEs and the difference btwn the coatings of the SE vs. the EII.

I have described looking through the 501 vs. 505 as the 501 as being more like a "gray scale" vs. eye popping colors. Looking at the various green colors of the trees and bushes in my backyard with the 501 SE, nothing really "pops" out, variations are very subtle. It's like a "gray scale" in green. Whereas with the 505 SE, any brown or red in the leaves will jump out at you. That's more dramatic with the EII where even the various greens show more degrees of separation than the early SE.

In addition, there's also a marked difference in contrast btwn the SE and the EII, which is even more obvious in comparing an early SE to an EII. The latest coatings on the 050xxx 10x42 SE (and presumably the 550 8x32 you have squirreled away

show improved contrast closer to the EII's.

Here's a reference I found that Ed might be able to amplify on that discusses "Optical Illusions Of Brightness And Contrast". The EII's brighter colors and increased contrast vs. the SE might be the factors that allow us to see more detail with the smaller aperture Nikon.

http://www.visualillusion.net/Chap08/Page01.php

Brock

Jonathan B. · Sep 13, 2011

brocknroller said:
Jerry,

If the SE transmits more light, it's not a difference in brightness that allows us to see more detail in low light with the EII.

I think one of the reasons we can see more detail in the EII in low light is due to the color bias in the different coatings used in early vs. late SEs and the difference btwn the coatings of the SE vs. the EII.

I have described looking through the 501 vs. 505 as the 501 as being more like a "gray scale" vs. eye popping colors. Looking at the various green colors of the trees and bushes in my backyard with the 501 SE, nothing really "pops" out, variations are very subtle. It's like a "gray scale" in green. Whereas with the 505 SE, any brown or red in the leaves will jump out at you. That's more dramatic with the EII where even the various greens show more degrees of separation than the early SE.

In addition, there's also a marked difference in contrast btwn the SE and the EII, which is even more obvious in comparing an early SE to an EII. The latest coatings on the 050xxx 10x42 SE (and presumably the 550 8x32 you have squirreled away show improved contrast closer to the EII's.

Here's a reference I found that Ed might be able to amplify on that discusses "Optical Illusions Of Brightness And Contrast". The EII's brighter colors and increased contrast vs. the SE might be the factors that allow us to see more detail with the smaller aperture Nikon.

http://www.visualillusion.net/Chap08/Page01.php

Brock

I have never seen more of anything with an EII than with an SE; it is always the other way around. In all conditions. Always. I even passed mine around to neighbors who liked birds but knew nothing about binoculars. They consistently verified my results.

Ole Sam Elliott always did love to kick a dead horse. Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick, kick,............

denco@comcast.n · Sep 13, 2011

James Bean said:
Thanks for that, Bob. I do like the HGs. Considering how prices are rising, with EDGs well over £1,000, I reckon Nikon SEs and HGs are excellent value for money, as good (for all practical purposes) as the very best and most expensive binoculars available new today.

"as good (for all practical purposes) as the very best and most expensive binoculars available new today."
The HG's are not as good as the latest alphas. This includes the Swarovision, EDG and FL's. These newer alpha's are quite a bit better but for the money the HG's represent a good bargain.

A question about the Nikon Premier 8x32 Roofs (1 Viewer)

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