The claims to great depth appear overblown, if they mean an exaggerated 3-D effect from widely spaced objectives. Measuring from enlarged images, the Zeiss HT objectives are spaced about 6mm wider than the eyes. Zeiss doesn't mention this as an advantage (and shouldn't). The new Leica adds another 4mm. Compared to a conventional Porro, whose objectives are spaced roughly twice as far apart as the eyes, that is mighty small.
Just advertising doing its job! Watch out, as ever.
Ron
Mmmm... my initial enthusiasm has been tempered by what you wrote above and Leif's question about possible higher cost of manufacturing Perger prisms. Perhaps this isn't the great leap forward for porros that I had hoped for since porros' greater depth perception and 3-D effect are in large part why I prefer them over roofs. The other reason is that since they're a cheaper to make you can get near alpha quality for a fraction of the cost.
If Perger prisms are more expensive to manufacture than traditional porros and if they lose their 3-D advantage, then they're merely "roofs" in porro's clothing. You might also see the large imager scale "roof illusion" with them.
Also, now that dielectric coatings can get 99.99% reflectivity from S-P prisms, I wonder what advantage the Pergers have over A/K or SP prisms other than the "additional beam paths have no impact on the observation beam path so the prisms are suitable for a pure observation binocular," as Leif said (see I'm giving you credit!), which means they are advantageous for rangefinders at least. I also wonder if this means the Geovids will lose their blue bias?
If Perger had come up with these back in the aluminum coatings days, the straight through roof style design would have taken a faster track evolutionary path rather than going through the phase coatings and aluminum-silver-dielectric roof prism cycle, which made roofs take a long time to come up to the light transmission standards of much cheaper porros. Some porros still beat the light transmission of the alphas.
The other question the "banana bulkiness" issue raises is like the midsized Zeiss FLs, which don't use the A/K prisms of their bigger brothers, if Leica might not use Pergers in their midsized Ultravids bur stick with the SPs to keep their size small?
If nothing else, at least we're finally seeing new technology being employed at the top level rather than another incremental upgrade.
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CameralandNY is accepting orders for March delivery. $2,945.00 for the 8x
http://www.cameralandny.com/optics/site.pl?page=40047
Since everybody likes gadgets, I would not necessarily discount the rangefinder for birding. Now you can say "With these things I can tell a Greater Scaup form a Lesser Scaup at 1,719 yds.!" Or whatever distance it turns out to be ;-). Or just don't use the button.
I would regard these Perger prisms as the better alternative to Abbe-Koenig. They do not compete with Schmidt-Pechan, the latter still being more compact. But the SP has intrinsic problems (regarding the anti-reflex coating of some of its surfaces) which make them inferior to Porros or AK designs. Now, the Perger is probably somewhat more compact than the AK and has no roof edge, so it would be a great alternative for those who want high performance combined with a small beam offset. The problem is: There is this patent, and if these prisms are in fact restricted to be used for Leica binoculars only, then we won't see any moderately priced binoculars which take advantage of them.
Cheers,
Holger
That's less expensive than the MSRP. I'm sure it's also available in meters.
Did you order or are you waiting for the 10x to become available?
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No, that CLNY link also has the 10x too, like for $2,995. Besides, I'm not much of a rangefinder fan anyway, despite my tongue-in-cheek comment above. I don't own any kind of a rangefinder. The binocular aspect is pretty neat.
Not really sure what the purpose of a binocular range finder is, at $3000.00 ? Wouldn't a rifle scope with a integrated range finder attached to a rifle, save time ?
Tim
I suppose this is the usual conversion error. FOV in meters on the German Leica website is 130m/1000m (7.3 degrees), which corresponds to 390 ft./1000 yards.