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Noctivid 10x42. finally a nearly perfect 10 (1 Viewer)

Where is Bill Cook? This is the hour of his opportunity to explain alignment, collimation, conditional alignment... !!!!!

--AP
 
The best way for me to check collimation is to focus on a portion of tree/distinct feature 50-100 yds off fairly parrallel to the ground. Back up from the bins/push them slightly in front of eyes. W/o moving gaze lift the bins, so you are still have the view framed w/o the bins. Do this a few times back & forth slowly.

If bad out of collimation I will see the image merge after lifting bins. If not that severe, yet too much I feel me eyes merging back to convergence when lifting the bins. Your eyes should feel no difference/strain when going from magnified to nothing w/properly collimated/focused bins.

At my age if I feel nothing I'm close enough.

As always, YMMV ...

ETA: ETA: Certainly no intent to rain on Robert's parade as the Noctivid being an alpha is undue of any criticism/critique of a newly commisioned entry level Leica. As well the blackout is not the proper description. I see pieces of black as crescents, located according to tilt, because I cannot hold the bin steady enough w/o being able to rest them in me normal fashion. It is so annoying that I lose concentration. Only in that aspect does it black out my view. I'm right there at the edge/outside looking in. Actually, w/cups all the way in I still see the center half of view nice, round w/o appearing crescents. I suppose if there was one more click setting I would be good to go. Or if Leica, in their infinite wisdom, offered slightly longer cups.
 
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Reading the posts above regarding collimation makes me wonder if we are naming this problem correctly, it occurs again and again on this forum, so as usual, it's probably a misunderstanding of mine.
I have had several binoculars where one of the barrels had/has its sweet spot off-centre, but have been in perfect alignment. I understood this to be a collimation issue, as in telescopes which might require the collimation to be set up by the user. Is the misalignment of the barrels (with each other) simply part of the collimation setup, or is it a separate feature? (It's nice to have the correct terminology when returning binoculars).

Mis alignment of the barrels would be my issue. I said collimation but you are correct when you think about it in telescopes it is not really a collimation issue but actually barrel alignment. Thanks for pointing that out.
 
I get zero eye strain when looking through the Leica so maybe I should leave well enough alone. It’s only at infinity when I place a star at the edge of the field stop in one barrel and than look through the other barrel can I see it is off a little bit. Top to bottom not side to side. Your eyes have a harder time compensating vertical alignment but they must not be out enough to matter. Just not perfect.
 
For people who want to use them without glasses, they have too much ER and thus blackout issues, especially the 8x42.
......... I really wanted to like the NVs but the above issues were deal breakers for me.

My experience was the same as what Peter experienced. I tried the 10X is April and had just could not get good eye placement. Then a second try of both the 8X and 10X in August and it went better but still the eyecups were to short for the eye relief for me.

As I recall, the eyecups have a non standard way of twisting out. I seem to remember observing the second time that when fully twisted, they retract a little. I think Lee posted on this but I cannot find the post. Maybe a Noctivid owner can prod my failing memory and clarify. Anyway, I may not have had them fully extended the first time but I still had issues the second time, just not as bad.

The Leica rep told me in August that Leica had heard about this from some folks and were working on some kind of extension. Then a few weeks later someone posted that an extension was available. I have heard nothing after that. Does anyone have any updates or information on if Leica came out with something to help us non eye glass viewers?
 
Bruce:

Thanks for making the important point that newer units of the NVs might have eyecups that can be extended a bit longer than for the earlier models---I was not aware of that, let's see if someone can confirm.

The units of NVs that I owned must have been among the earliest ones. Like you, I also recall that some people claimed there was a trick that made it possible to extend the eyecups fully, but personally I found that extension was easy to do and am sure I extended them to their maximum length.

Regarding your experience with blackouts, the difference between the two different occasions might have been due to different light conditions: I think blackout issues are less severe on a bright day when your eye pupils are almost closed.

Peter
 
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Greetings Peter,

My understanding was that Leica was not offering an optional complete replacement of the eyecup as Zeiss does with the Conquest HD but was instead developing an optional add-on or partial replacement . I am not aware of any changes to the eyecups on current production compared to when the model first came out. Hopefully someone who knows more and can give us an update.

Both days were bright when I checked the Noctivids. There is a real possibility that I did not have the eyecups fully extended the first time after paying more attention to how they worked the second time. I guess I will never know for sure on that one!
 
If you turn the eyecup all the way counter clockwise till it stops it actually retracts back in and that is the removal position. Just look at the eyecup as you twist it out and you can see the longest extension. Now I am wondering if it could just be a field stop causing what I see as barrel mis alignment since the view is so relaxing with no eye strain.
 
Now I am wondering if it could just be a field stop causing what I see as barrel mis alignment since the view is so relaxing with no eye strain.

The field stops definitely could be vertically misaligned without causing miscollimation between the right and left telescopes. The Noctivid almost certainly uses eccentric rings at the eyepiece end for collimation. In most specimens of binoculars that use that method there will be at least a little vertical offset between the right and left field stops. Sometimes it can be large enough to be distracting, if a lot of eccentricity was needed to achieve collimation.

If your field stops are vertically offset by 1/8 of a full moon that would be about 1/16 of a degree of real field (3.75 minutes) or about 37.5 minutes of apparent field for a 10x binocular, not very much. If you look at a blank wall or sky and move your gaze down to the field stops at 6:00 you should see a little vertical offset between the two, if that's the explanation.
 
Here is a couple of pics showing the mis alignment. Look at the bottom of the field stop at the speed limit sign and you can see the difference
 

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The field stops definitely could be vertically misaligned without causing miscollimation between the right and left telescopes. The Noctivid almost certainly uses eccentric rings at the eyepiece end for collimation. In most specimens of binoculars that use that method there will be at least a little vertical offset between the right and left field stops. Sometimes it can be large enough to be distracting, if a lot of eccentricity was needed to achieve collimation.

If your field stops are vertically offset by 1/8 of a full moon that would be about 1/16 of a degree of real field (3.75 minutes) or about 37.5 minutes of apparent field for a 10x binocular, not very much. If you look at a blank wall or sky and move your gaze down to the field stops at 6:00 you should see a little vertical offset between the two, if that's the explanation.


Yes Henry you are correct. As soon as I concentrate on the bottom of the field on a blank sky it takes about 2 seconds for the overlapping to merge into one.
 
First, be certain that it's the field stops that are offset rather than the image. If so, there is no real problem unless the offset is large enough to be unpleasant. I'd rather have a well collimated binocular with slightly wonky field stops than a less well collimated one with perfectly aligned stops.
 
Either way Robert, I wouldn't accept it like that.

As an observation, no pun intended, this eye relief problem of too much relative to how far the eyecups extend seems to be a very common problem these days. I have to wonder how that can be?

The mechanics of eyecups to allow ALL users to be accommodated seems to be lagging behind the eyepiece designs that have given so much eye relief. Do these manufacturers use their own bins?
 
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Many modern binoculars are unpleasant for me to use because of excessive eye relief.
The short eyecups just makes the problem worse.
 
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