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Harpia 95: A Review on a Scottish Island (1 Viewer)

This is frustrating! Now I can’t wait for these innovations to ‘trickle down’ and become part of the way all scopes are made. Keeping the apparent field of view the same throughout the zoom range, putting the magnification and focus controls together on the barrel, having such a whopping great field of view at the lowest magnification—with any luck those things will be widely adopted, even if other aspects of the scope, like its flat, chromatic aberration-free field and sensational central sharpness, are impossible to copy at lower prices. Really good review.

Peter
Thanks for your kind words. There are some excellent scopes available today, at different price levels, and I think Harpia definitely brings something different to the party, and in a sound, practical way. As always with optics you need to try it out to discover if its talents appeal to you.

Lee
 
This is frustrating! Now I can’t wait for these innovations to ‘trickle down’ and become part of the way all scopes are made. Keeping the apparent field of view the same throughout the zoom range, putting the magnification and focus controls together on the barrel, having such a whopping great field of view at the lowest magnification—with any luck those things will be widely adopted, even if other aspects of the scope, like its flat, chromatic aberration-free field and sensational central sharpness, are impossible to copy at lower prices. Really good review.


Peter,

Good advice from Lee there. Could be that your post is a tad too quick to accept some enthusiastic early and subjective opinions of the Harpia. We’re still far from a complete picture of its basic optical characteristics. In fact, as far as I know only Kimmo and I have made any attempt at all at objective testing. Hopefully more will be coming from Kimmo, but my one hour with the scope was all it took for me to scratch it off my short list based on a failure to meet the minimum standards for image quality I expect from an expensive scope.

Frankly, even if I had only seen Lee’s review I would be skeptical just from reading between the lines of a couple of his observations.

Firstly, he noticed (as I did) that the image sharpness of the Harpia improves as magnification increases up to 70x. Since no 95mm telescope can be “perfectly “ sharp at 70x that strongly suggests to me that the lower magnifications are not as sharp as they should be, something I confirmed by comparing the Harpia to a better scope at 40x.

Secondly, I was struck by his observation that the 82mm Meopta S2 was “as sharp and contrasty” as the 95mm Harpia. Assuming equal magnification an 82mm scope cannot be as sharp and contrasty as a 95mm scope of equal quality. Obviously the S2 can’t be better than a perfect 82mm scope, which suggests that the Harpia Lee reviewed was also not performing any better than a perfect 82mm scope, not a good result for a 95mm scope.

In fairness to Lee the two of us must represent the absolute Yin and Yang of optics evaluation. I don’t think he would object if I say that he quite intentionally sticks to global impressions under field conditions and I quite intentionally stick to measurements and comparisons under controlled conditions. Most consumers are certainly closer to Lee’s approach when they evaluate scopes, so I expect Zeiss is counting on many satisfactory global impressions to carry the day for the Harpia.

Henry
 
Henry,
I didn't want to comment earlier, so as to influence a good review.

Was the Harpia that Lee tested picked out by Zeiss as a good sample to be reviewed?
Was it in fact better than a randomly bought Harpia from a shop?

Sky and Telescope used to have the policy of buying incognito from a normal shop when testing scopes.
This is fairer than being given an example by the maker to be tested.
But even here, one needs in my experience to test several, if not many, seemingly identical scopes to see the range of performance.

For me, a 93mm high performance expensive scope should have the ability to give very good results at 185x without the image breaking down because of optics limitations.
I understand that because of prisms and lots of glass 130x or 140x might be reasonable for most.
But not for me at £3,000 plus.
I expect to be able to use high powers when I choose to observe in favourable Seeing conditions.
I do read the weather both for terrestrial and astro observations.

Patrick Moore's advice holds true for me still.
One good observation is worth a thousand bad observations.

I accept that for birdwatchers the Harpia seems to be a very useful spotting scope. Birdwatchers don't normally go for high magnifications.
I hope it sells well and the quality is good.
 
In fairness to Lee the two of us must represent the absolute Yin and Yang of optics evaluation. I don’t think he would object if I say that he quite intentionally sticks to global impressions under field conditions and I quite intentionally stick to measurements and comparisons under controlled conditions. Most consumers are certainly closer to Lee’s approach when they evaluate scopes, so I expect Zeiss is counting on many satisfactory global impressions to carry the day for the Harpia.

Henry

Hi Henry
No, I don't object to that at all, I think you summed up our different priorities neatly and I think both approaches are of value.

What I found, and I mentioned this in the same post as my remarks about the Meopta's sharpness and contrast, is that IMHO, Harpia is nevertheless a superior field instrument due to its combination of ultra-wide field at 23x and its perceived sharpness at 70x. The convenience of a 23-70x magnification range without changing eyepieces, and its handling with the two adjacent wheels facilitating fast acquisition of new targets also contribute greatly to its capabilities during actual birding and nature observing. I found all of these attributes to be of real benefit during field observation and if Zeiss is relying on these attributes to 'carry the day for Harpia' then they have reason for optimism.

Lee
 
This Harpia discussion reminds me of two things from my 35 mm film photography past, especially before shutter and aperture control were able to be electronically tweaked (i.e. adjusted infinitely in automated modes). Some reviewers criticized constant aperture zooms for "wasting aperture" at their short end, but I loved my Nikon 80-200 f/4 AIS lens because I didn't have to adjust shutter speed after changing focal length. The other thing that the Harpia discussion reminds me of is the introduction of super-zoom lenses, which were criticized for having poor resolution and weird distortions but which were so handy for most purposes and totally adequate for making 4x6 prints. I never went for the extremes, e.g. 28-200 mm f/3.5-5.6 available from Tamron (and later 28-300 available from several brands), but I did enjoy my Nikon 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 AF-D (and capable of 1:2 macro), which was perfect for most casual family and travel photography. That lens, on a body with built-in flash, plus maybe one small prime lens depending on the setting (e.g. 20 mm f/2.8, or 50 mm f/1.4), was all I needed when traveling light.

My sense of aesthetics and interest in limits of performance makes me partial to Henry Link's approach, but my interest in practical applications as a birder makes me very sympathetic to Troubador's evaluation. Most of the time, in the course of birding, it is all about getting on the bird fast enough and with a good enough view to make the ID. A big aperture to facilitate image brightness at less frequently used high (for birding, i.e. < 100x) magnifications, coupled to a very wide FOV for scanning and routine magnification for ID (i.e. ~30x) seems to be a very practical approach for a birding tool. The dual-ratio focus and adjacent placements of zoom and focus controls are likewise excellent designs for rapid target (i.e. bird) acquisition and assessment.

The downsides of this scope are the high cost and the high weight for what is effectively a small aperture scope in most use. One of the virtues of those one-lens-does-all super-zooms for 35 mm photography was that they were really cheap! The pricing was intentionally very competitive. Even someone with Henry Link's sensibilities might buy one for occasional use when practicalities of just getting the shot trump peak optical performance. The Harpia comes at too high a cost to buy just for fun. Unlike Peter Audrain, I'm not so interested in the overall design of the Harpia trickling down. I'm really only interested in increasing FOV of zoom eyepieces, especially at low (~25x) magnifications. I love light and big exit pupils. The latest efforts from Kowa and Meopta are a huge improvement over past eyepieces, and I bet we'll see better in the future.

--AP
 
Alexis,
In my film days, it was only prime lenses, with rare exceptions.
Usually 50mm f/1.4 or 50mm f/1.2.
Sometimes other focal lengths, but usually fast lenses.
I had zoom lenses but never used them, except the early Sun 85mm to 220mm? About 1970.

But with digital compacts it is only zooms.
With the Sony A7S it is usually 85mm f/1.4 or the standard short zoom.

A professional photographer showed me his well worn camera and said I hadn't lived if I didn't have a Nikon with a Nikon 20mm lens.
That is what he nearly always used.

I can appreciate all the attributes of the Harpia for a birdwatcher and I hope it sells well, as it should.
 
A pragmatic assessment Alexis and I would only add that in normal daylight one's pupil closes down to approximate to Harpias EP at 23x anyway so in normal viewing I don't think this is a disadvantage.

BTW my go-to lens for much of the time is a Canon EF 24-70mm f/4L IS USM which can macro up to 0.7x life size providing the working distance is acceptable, but particular habitats will see me also taking out a EF 16-35mm f/4L IS USM and/or EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM. My camera has a 1.6x crop factor.

Lee
 
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A pragmatic assessment Alexis and I would only add that in normal daylight one's pupil closes down to approximate to Harpias EP at 23x anyway so in normal viewing I don't think this is a disadvantage.

I thought that this idea was probably a bit optimistic from not taking into account less than ideal daylight conditions, so I constructed a real world experiment to test it even before I saw the Harpia.

I made a 50mm stop down mask for my 90mm Takahashi Sky90 combined with a 25mm eyepiece to yield 20x (2.5mm EP). The mask could be flipped in and out of the light path to allow an instantaneous comparison of the same scope at 50mm and 90mm apertures.

I did see no difference in image brightness between 50mm and 90mm when looking at open areas in bright sunlight. But common conditions, like an overcast sky, low light levels around sunset, looking into dark shadow areas or a combination of those quickly demonstrated that my eye was opening to more than 2.5mm under many dim daylight conditions that would be considered normal for birding.

Will people notice the dimness if they don't have a way to make an instantaneous comparison to a full aperture scope? Possibly not, yet another way that the Harpia benefits from not being examined too closely.

Henry
 
Henry, and everyone else,

This is absolutely fascinating! I especially liked, "the S2 can’t be better than a perfect 82mm scope."

(In every area of expertise, there are things that, left unsaid, make a big impression on people who know that they should have been said. I write and read many letters of recommendation—and I can, and occasionally must, write a letter that, while outwardly as positive-sounding as one could like, doesn't actually urge its recipient to admit or hire the person. Incidentally, the British and American letter-of-recommendation cultures are wildly different, with British letters being much shorter, flatter, franker, and unlikely to rhapsodize, which can have disastrous results, in an American context, for British applicants who rely on letters from the U.K.)

So it's fun to see this debate play out more explicitly. I am far enough from feeling justified in buying any more pricey optical equipment right now that the price difference between the Harpia and other top scopes didn't really register for me. It will be interesting to see what happens, and whether this design really does become 'the way all scopes will work soon,' or not. I'm delighted to be helped to understand what might be lost if it does, as well as gained.
 
I thought that this idea was probably a bit optimistic from not taking into account less than ideal daylight conditions, so I constructed a real world experiment to test it even before I saw the Harpia.

I made a 50mm stop down mask for my 90mm Takahashi Sky90 combined with a 25mm eyepiece to yield 20x (2.5mm EP). The mask could be flipped in and out of the light path to allow an instantaneous comparison of the same scope at 50mm and 90mm apertures.

I did see no difference in image brightness between 50mm and 90mm when looking at open areas in bright sunlight. But common conditions, like an overcast sky, low light levels around sunset, looking into dark shadow areas or a combination of those quickly demonstrated that my eye was opening to more than 2.5mm under many dim daylight conditions that would be considered normal for birding.

Will people notice the dimness if they don't have a way to make an instantaneous comparison to a full aperture scope? Possibly not, yet another way that the Harpia benefits from not being examined too closely.

Henry

Wow Henry you should have seen the weather we had on Islay! Skies like the coming of doom and downpours that would have scared Noah. On one day we had a pile of hail about 6 inches thick in a corner outside our cottage. Still managed to see right across the bay through the Harpia at 23x though and at 70x was thrilled to see the whiskers of seals and otters at what seemed to the naked eye to be impossible distances.

Lee
 
Is this a fair summary of the discussion so far—mediocre IQ partly (or entirely?) made up for by various convenience features?
 
I think I should explain the comment in post 23 that 'one good observation is worth a thousand bad ones'.
This is astronomy advice, particularly regarding planetary observations with medium to large scopes.

It is to do with the atmospheric conditions.
If conditions are poor then it is best not to make observations, particularly at high magnifications, as false results and conclusions will occur. This can make the observation worse than useless.

I learnt not to set up the scope and wait for good conditions. These usually occur around 3 a.m. if at all.

With every observation one must include accurate UT time, conditions, Seeing conditions, transparency, ones name, the magnification, the aperture used and the longitude of the planet's central image.
Most planets rotate quickly.
It is best to observe when the planet is highest in the south in the U.K.

With deep sky observing low to medium magnifications are normal except with say planetary nebulae, so good transparency is more important than good Seeing (steadiness of the air).

Clearly bird watching and nature observations in poor weather are quite different.
 
The scope itself is a handsome instrument with an adjustable eyecup that moves with a well-engineered precision unknown to some of Zeiss’s binocular eyecups. There are two wheels of different sizes side-by-side on the body, one for focus and one for magnification. As has been the norm with recent Zeiss scopes, the focus wheel adjusts the focus finely and slowly for a certain rotation and then ups the speed to allow quicker re-focusing over longer distances. I was a bit suspicious of this at first although I had found it agreeable at the Bird Fair. However it worked so well it was easy to forget about it. Both focus and magnification adjuster moved with a smooth and backlash-free precision. Up front there is a retractable lens-hood.

I tried the Harpia a month ago with some friends and we all could agree that there was to much slope in the focus wheel. The supplier told us is was fine tuning when we felt the slope but none of us could see any difference in focus when we were in "slope" mode. It ended up with to of my friends buying the Swarovski ATX 30-70x95 even though they felt the Harpia was sharper. But they had a bad feeling with the focus on the Harpia and they didn't feel they could live with that slope.
 
I tried the Harpia a month ago with some friends and we all could agree that there was to much slope in the focus wheel. The supplier told us is was fine tuning when we felt the slope but none of us could see any difference in focus when we were in "slope" mode. It ended up with to of my friends buying the Swarovski ATX 30-70x95 even though they felt the Harpia was sharper. But they had a bad feeling with the focus on the Harpia and they didn't feel they could live with that slope.

Nothing new: some people are not happy with the combined fast+fine tuning at all, others love it. This was the same with the DiaScope.

I'm one of the guys who love it. The Swaro needs 3 full turns, the Zeiss only 2 turns (fast) plus finest tuning in one finger.
 
I tried the Harpia a month ago with some friends and we all could agree that there was to much slope in the focus wheel. The supplier told us is was fine tuning when we felt the slope but none of us could see any difference in focus when we were in "slope" mode. It ended up with to of my friends buying the Swarovski ATX 30-70x95 even though they felt the Harpia was sharper. But they had a bad feeling with the focus on the Harpia and they didn't feel they could live with that slope.

Tommy

I do not understand the use of the word 'slope' in this context but clearly your friends did not like the slow/fast combined focuser. I was unsure about this too before I used the Harpia. I have an old second-hand Diascope 65 with seperate small knobs for slow and fast focusing and almost always use the slow focuser exclusively.

With the Harpia, to my surprise, I soon forgot about the focuser because it worked fine for me. Most of the time I was using the slow-speed focusing which I found acurate and pleasant to use.

Lee
 
That hail sounds life-threatening! The Hebrides: Life In The Raw!

Peter

One day we were sitting in our car watching the coast for Otters in pouring rain, when the rain turned to hail about 3 times the size of frozen peas. The noise from the roof of the car was like heavy machine-gun fire and we fully expected dents in the bodywork. Fortunately there was none but this sound, and the sight of the sea being whipped into a frenzy by the fusillade of ice was nothing short of Armagedon.

I hasten to add that interspersed between these episodes there were periods of blue skies and calm seas and no wind at all, giving stunning views through the Harpia of Gannets and Kittiwakes flying far out over the North Atlantic, while inshore Shags, Black Guillemots and Great Northern Divers dived and surfaced through a green sea so placid you couldn't believe the violence of the storms of previous days.

Lee
 
Optical systems are bound by the laws of physics, whether we like to admit it or not. As 'good' as it may apparently be, the Harpia can, like any other scope, only ever be a compromise; gains in one area are balanced by losses in others. At £3000, its one hell of an expensive compromise and it remains to be seen just how many well-heeled birders make the jump and whether it is a success financially for Zeiss or whether it founders and is revealed as a bit of an expensive 'vanity project'. What it may do, if the uptake is good and units sell in numbers, is push the envelope price-wise, pushing up the price of optics generally as other companies see that £3000 is 'not unreasonable' for a scope for some birders. As Alexis says in post 25, if it helps to improve eyepiece design, it's appearance will have served a useful purpose.

RB
 
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Tommy

I do not understand the use of the word 'slope' in this context but clearly your friends did not like the slow/fast combined focuser. I was unsure about this too before I used the Harpia. I have an old second-hand Diascope 65 with seperate small knobs for slow and fast focusing and almost always use the slow focuser exclusively.

With the Harpia, to my surprise, I soon forgot about the focuser because it worked fine for me. Most of the time I was using the slow-speed focusing which I found acurate and pleasant to use.

Lee

Hi Lee. I think I used the word slope wrongB :). But you're right they didn't like the slow focuser mostly because they couldn't see any difference in the scope for the first 2-3 mm they moved the focuser.
 
… the rain turned to hail about 3 times the size of frozen peas. The noise from the roof of the car was like heavy machine-gun fire …. this sound, and the sight of the sea being whipped into a frenzy by the fusillade of ice was nothing short of Armagedon. … there were periods of blue skies and calm seas and no wind at all, giving stunning views through the Harpia of Gannets and Kittiwakes flying far out over the North Atlantic, while inshore Shags, Black Guillemots and Great Northern Divers dived and surfaced through a green sea so placid you couldn't believe the violence of the storms of previous days.

This sounds like Down East Maine, cubed. I basically can’t wait to go. Even the hail sounds great, though I wouldn’t necessarily want to be sailing there. Thanks so much for ‘taking us along’ in this thread.
 
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