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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Meopta amazing test results! German magazine (1 Viewer)

James, but have you experienced what I've marked between ** below? Have heard about this from a source outside Bf. Said to cause a slight "washing out" of detail when viewing a raptor against a bright sky, for example.

[From the text received through the link above.] The light transmission was excel equivalents 95 and 94 percent (day / night). This is lonely peak. *The high transmission goes somewhat at the expense of the contrast and the natural union, true-color image reproduction in good Daylight.* In low light in twilight or night plays the glass from its strengths. Then a very bright picture with excellent is gender recognition of detail offered. An all rounder for day, dusk and night.
 
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I am having trouble viewing the review, and it looks very interesting.

I get the message, the file is too large to translate, I've tried both Google
and Bing.

Can someone post a link in English? Thanks.

Jerry
 
Just clicking on the link in post #9 directly gives a v. usable English transln. incl. the table. Unless the screen area used is fairly wide separate parts can get squashed together.
 
pompadour said:
James, but have you experienced what I've marked between ** below? Have heard about this from a source outside Bf. Said to cause a slight "washing out" of detail when viewing a raptor against a bright sky, for example.

[From the text received through the link above.] The light transmission was excel equivalents 95 and 94 percent (day / night). This is lonely peak. *The high transmission goes somewhat at the expense of the contrast and the natural union, true-color image reproduction in good Daylight.* In low light in twilight or night plays the glass from its strengths. Then a very bright picture with excellent is gender recognition of detail offered. An all rounder for day, dusk and night.
Click to expand...


No, I don't see this at all, and the same was said for the FL, wash-out in bright light.

I use the HT for raptor watching all the time and it is the best binocular I have tried in these situations, with great detail and colour recognition in brightly back-lit views. Most of the advantage is the complete elimination of contrast reducing veiling glare in this sort of situation, a form of veiling glare that you might never notice without having an ideal reference standard. Using the HT vs. the FL for raptors / shorebirds / waterfowl in high contrast, brightly back-lit scenario's is night and day - with the FL image looking decidedly muddy, the HT crystal clear.

I don't think I'm a voice in the wilderness here either, as many HT users have commented on the same sort of virtues as I mentioned above - some with direct comparisons with other alpha glass - and the HT showed a clear advantage.

For me, the HT has an unparalleled impression of transparency, especially when the lighting is adverse, as well as great apparent sharpness aided by the very high transmission and high contrast. This is not a binocular that you try for 5 minutes in the optics shop - you need to get out and look at distant raptors, shorebirds on a low-contrast mudflat or passerines in a deep, dark canopy. I have yet to see anything match them in this sort of 'real-world' birding test.
 
AFAIK Leica introduced HD as the Highest Definition on performance/precision when they introduced the Ultravid HD serie.
Next to blackening the inside they roughened it also to minimise stray light;
They put their patented HDC (High Durable Coating, a 7-10 layer coating creating brightness, scratch resistance and protection to enveriomental damage) on the lenses;
They used glass with fluoride ionen in the objective lens (straingly enough the used on the Geovid HD only fluoride ionen containing glass for the focusser lens and not for the objective side) and FMC on all surfaces with the right thickness for true color and contrast.
Everything according to the Highest Definition of QC.

ED only counts for Extra Low Dispersion glass. This does not automaticly means Fluoride containg glass, but only glass under ED criteria. So HD (at least with Leica) goes much further.

Zeiss puts FL on their Victory (not on their Conquest or Terra)!

Swarovski stopped using these terms under the assumption that everybody nowadays knows A-fabrics only use state of the art materials (as I understood focussers excluded).

Jan
 
Jan,

You say ''So HD (at least with Leica) goes much further.''

Maybe true, but the whole point of HD glass is the reduction of aberrations - mostly chromatic aberration - and in the case of the Leica, this seems to have no effect.

Allbinos gives them 5.3 for CA [for the 8x42HD], much lower than most other alphas. So, I would have to say that Leica's choice of glass in this case was unsuccessful.
 
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james holdsworth said:
Jan,

You say ''So HD (at least with Leica) goes much further.''

Maybe true, but the whole point of HD glass is the reduction of aberrations - mostly chromatic aberration - and in the case of the Leica, this seems to have no effect.

Allbinos gives them 5.3 for CA [for the 8x42HD], much lower than most other alphas. So, I would have to say that Leica's choice of glass in this case was unsuccessful.
Click to expand...

James,

This is what the official position of Leica is and where AFAIK the term HD comes from.
Can't change that.
The Ultravid HD is, as you ofcourse know, an upgrade of the UV.
I think I speak for both of us that I wish that the next generation (Perger?) Leica does'nt need marketing mambo jambo!

Jan
 
One owner of an optics company I talked to insisted that the HD glass in his model had a better performance than the ordinary ED glass used in other designs. Unfortunately we were interrupted before I could get an explanation, but I wondered if he meant HD glass had a better Abbe value. Anyone Know?

David
 
David,
As I wrote before, the term HD does not give informatin at all unless specified. If color dispersion is minimized the producer could mention terms like achromatic, apochromatic etc. That is a clear type of information. Leica does it right by using the term HD for a number of mechanical and optical improvements.
Gijs
 
Gijs van Ginkel said:
David,
As I wrote before, the term HD does not give informatin at all unless specified. If color dispersion is minimized the producer could mention terms like achromatic, apochromatic etc. That is a clear type of information. Leica does it right by using the term HD for a number of mechanical and optical improvements.
Gijs
Click to expand...

This is true - there exists no such term like "HD" in technical optics, it is entirely marketing buzz. Even "ED" means nothing else but "extra-low-dispersion" and refers to different glass types in the glass catalogues which exceed a certain Abbe-number (which one I don't recall off hand, not sure whether there exists any ISO norm for that). "ED"-glass, if applied correctly, reduces chromatic aberration and in this way contributes to an improved "definition" (in this case: resolution) of the system. But definition is more than that, it also contains contrast, stray light and all that, so "HD" essentially wants to say "well made binocular" :)

Cheers,
Holger
 
Holger Merlitz said:
so "HD" essentially wants to say "well made binocular" :)
Click to expand...

Nice definition :)

To expand on that, most times HD was used as "HD = our new product that looks the same on the outside as the old one but is much better inside" E.g. Ultravid HD, ATM HD, Meostar HD.
They could also have used the more honest "neu" as Swaro did for a while with their SLCs (before upgrading them to "HD" as well...)
 
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dalat said:
Nice definition :)

To expand on that, most times HD was used as "HD = our new product that looks the same on the outside as the old one but is much better inside" E.g. Ultravid HD, ATM HD, Meostar HD.
They could also have used the more honest "neu" as Swaro did for a while with their SLCs (before upgrading them to "HD" as well...)
Click to expand...

Well said!

Jan
 
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