New Horizons II (1 Viewer)

Using Binoculars in TwiLight - focusing is the key issue

The forum's lens has been adjusted such that Rico's illuminating widom is no longer focused on our receptors. He is now a blur from the past. We are happily alone again and free to discuss binoculars in twilight, his beacon of light no longer shining upon us. B

* * *

While it is important to gather all illumination possible and deliver it to the eye's pupil in a most effiecient way, there are other factors that affect binoculars use under twilight conditions. The most limiting factor, in my experince, is the inability of the user to focus the binoculars on what he "thinks" is a subject or target. This problem does not occur in astronomy since stars are bright light spots and easy to focus on.

In contrast, a hunter or a sailor looking for objects in near darkness has a very difficult time focusing the binoculars on very vague, undefined forms that he sees through his binoculrs. It is this inability to focus that hinders observation the most. A target or animal of weak contrsat becomes invisible as its apparent contrast is further attenuated by the defocused nature of the image produced by the binoculars.

Sterioscopic view is not about "aesthetics", its about "utility"

A lot of activity has being carried on in the electronic gaming industry, movie industry and other tech fields to produce three-dimensional (stereoscopic) games, movies and other forms of entertainment. I myself have been trying to design direct-vision (no electronics) binocular instruments which provide a more authentic 3D experience as well. Current binoculars -which have the same binocular field of view as a monocular and offer same interpapillary distance as the naked eyes- are NOT the ideal instrument.

However, as I continue to study various aspects of human visual perception I have come to the conclusion that a true 3D view is not necessarily more pleasing than a 2D "image" of the same scene. In human beings, stereoscopic vision has evolved to serve certain "utilitarian" functions: helping us pick up objects by hand, make tools, hunt, etc. But when it comes to aesthetics and enjoyment, a 2D image is perfectly adequate. That's why sculpture never took over painting. For the same reason, I predict that 3D cinema and TV will never become mainstream. The human brain can construct the 3D scene from the 2D view presented to it and this construction is more pleasing than feeding a direct 3D image to the brain.

So, while I am still working on my projects pertaining to enhanced direct-view binoculars, I do not think that the resulting image will be more visually pleasing. It will be more "useful" for certain specific tasks such as hunting or identification of distant targets.

Attachment: Cristo Morto by the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna (around 1480 AD). Note the violent perspective, which foreshortens and dramatizes the recumbent figure, stressing the anatomical details.

In the real world, with friends and loved ones, I think that 3D is most useful.

I don't think that cardboard cutouts are nearly as personal.

But our brain is quite happy with a 2D T.V. as we know it isn't real.

I do love the photography of some T.V. series. It is clear the videographer knows his photography.
I often freeze frame the scenes and see how good the stills are.
But this is art and not reality.

B.

Omid said:

The human brain can construct the 3D scene from the 2D view presented to it and this construction is more pleasing than feeding a direct 3D image to the brain.

Click to expand...

Interesting observations. I do think the ability to perceive an illusion such as a photograph, a painting, or a line drawing has to be learned. I also believe that our visual system relies on symbolism, at its root, a 2d map of value structure, to interpret vision.

All the realistic, or illusory elements in a painting, or a photograph are 2 dimensional... that is they look the same with one eye as with two eyes. Depth of field, atmospheric perspective, scale shifts, overlaps, edges, cast shadows...

I agree the advantages conferred with 2 eyes and subsequent stereo vision are essentially utilitarian... survival based. Plus, you have a 'backup' eye, and can still get around, even if your days as a first baseman might be numbered...

3d as a marketing device for entertainment has all sorts of limitations, one simply being having to wear goggles. If one already has to wear eyeglasses, it is just a further impediment to comfortable viewing.

About ten years ago at the studio where I work, our parent company mandated that we produce versions of our films in 3d. They had to set up a separate division just to create 3d versions as a post process, as none of the directors embraced it as a cinematic tool they wanted to work with during production.

In fact 3d, when applied to film, starts to run into direct conflict with a lot of ordinary cinematic conventions, such as an over the shoulder shot. The out of focus foreground element can suddenly become an unwanted 'feature' if the 3d effect is not dialed down...
It can be done well, tastefully, and dynamically, but it has more often been used as a cheap gimmick, driven by a marketing scheme, not a narrative, or artistic one.

You can go back to the cave paintings done 30,000 years ago to see how sophisticated symbolism is, and how it is at the root of our visual interpretation of the world.

On a personal note, I have no normal stereo vision, in my every day life. My eye muscles were damaged when I was young, and a few surgeries could not correct it, so I always saw a different picture out of each eye, never a fused image. Not until I was a middle-aged adult and put on goggles for the first time, and watched an animation test in 3d, did I actually experience it. The only other way I see in 3d in the real world is with binoculars (!). As long as the IPD can be set narrow enough, I get a 3d view. But like I mentioned earlier, most visual cues in art, AND nature with regards to illusion and depth are not 3 dimensional.

Maybe that's one of the reasons why I like binoculars so much..

-Bill

Bill,

Are the movies mainly shot on digital cameras or using film?
I notice that digital movies seem to have less dynamic range, and darker images such as skies are rendered as a series of different brightnesses rather than a smooth flow.

The audio on digital movies also seem poorer, but this may be due to my old ears.

Do some movies have film masters and digital copies?

Are U.S. lenses used or other makes?

Sometimes older lenses such as Deep Field Panchros give illusions of depth.

Regards,
B.

Binastro said:

Bill,

Are the movies mainly shot on digital cameras or using film?
I notice that digital movies seem to have less dynamic range, and darker images such as skies are rendered as a series of different brightnesses rather than a smooth flow.

The audio on digital movies also seem poorer, but this may be due to my old ears.

Do some movies have film masters and digital copies?

Are U.S. lenses used or other makes?

Sometimes older lenses such as Deep Field Panchros give illusions of depth.

Regards,
B.

Click to expand...

Hi Binastro, The films are computer animated. They used to be shot onto a film negative, using a proprietary laser scanner/recorder. I don't know the types of lenses used for that. Some links here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixar_Photoscience_Team
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_DiFrancesco

AFAIK, all our films have film AND digital masters. Not sure when they stopped generating film masters in house. Perhaps Cars 1, was the last.

If you're seeing aliasing in sky gradients, it may be the resolution of your screen, the low resolution of the signal, or a mis-match somewhere. Do you have an HD signal?, or an HD compatible screen?

One thing I've come to appreciate with the lighting tools in CG is that we can set values for exterior light and interior shadows, and create a balance of exposure that allows one to see color in shadows, as well as in bright light. To my eyes, more of how the eye/mind compensates, as opposed to film, which required an enormous amount of light to be pumped into shadows to keep them from going black. The end result being multiple cast shadows all over the ground in many shots from all the bounce lights on the set. Of course, just because a tool has the capability of creating a 'natural' exposure balance does not mean it will be utilized that way!

I find audio at home to generally be better than at a standard movie theatre, unless one is in a screening room optimized for good sound. I suppose it depends on where one is sitting as well.

I think at times dialogue can get buried in effects and music dynamics. Perhaps more the taste and style of the director/sound engineer.

Good surround mixing can be a pleasure to experience.

If you read up on David DiFrancesco, he's the one who developed the 3d lens prototype. I believe they contracted Leica or Zeiss to make a transfer lens to hook the whole thing up to the front end of a motion picture camera.

Just to stay on topic: Binoculars!

Cheers,

Bill

Thanks Bill.

To stay on the topic of binoculars, I just saw Mercury with the 8.5x44 Swift HR/5 binocular for the first time this year after storm winds of 70mph plus and a very clear sky.
Then with my distance glasses held 5 inches in front of my eyes, and a few minutes later with normal distance glasses fit.

The car over the road is flatter now after the tree blew down on it. The fire brigade called in tree surgeons who chopped it up in 45 minutes. The tree not the car.
Luckily nobody was in the car.
I used the 8.5x44 binocular to see the car Sunday evening and follow the tree removal.

This tree was used by many birds to hide in its evergreen branches. They have lost a home.

I saw the two crows in our large oak tree branches last night with the 8.5x44 binocular about 20 feet from me. They seemed to hang on quite well in high wind. There are usually one or two crows over night in the tree. The binocular shows them well at 3 a.m.

I am fearful our 200 year old oak might succumb in the increasingly violent storms.
A British Airways Boeing 747 crossed from New York to London in 4 hours 56 minutes riding 250 mph jet stream winds. It reached 825mph over Newfoundland.
The previous record only set last year was 5 hours 13 minutes by a Norwegian aircraft.

I have an HD T.V. and a fairly good signal.
I don't see the aliasing? of skies with old films shot on film, but see it a lot on modern films.
It may be my T.V. but I think it is the digital cameras used.

Some digital movies use extreme colour enhancement and contrast. Although the resolution is high, the result looks unreal. These are shot on something like a Canon 5D at very low cost, sometimes $2,000 for the whole film.
The lenses used are normal consumer camera lenses shown by the typical out of focus street lights iris blades images.

Regards,
B.

Omid said:

A lot of activity has being carried on in the electronic gaming industry, movie industry and other tech fields to produce three-dimensional (stereoscopic) games, movies and other forms of entertainment. I myself have been trying to design direct-vision (no electronics) binocular instruments which provide a more authentic 3D experience as well. Current binoculars -which have the same binocular field of view as a monocular and offer same interpapillary distance as the naked eyes- are NOT the ideal instrument.

However, as I continue to study various aspects of human visual perception I have come to the conclusion that a true 3D view is not necessarily more pleasing than a 2D "image" of the same scene. In human beings, stereoscopic vision has evolved to serve certain "utilitarian" functions: helping us pick up objects by hand, make tools, hunt, etc. But when it comes to aesthetics and enjoyment, a 2D image is perfectly adequate. That's why sculpture never took over painting. For the same reason, I predict that 3D cinema and TV will never become mainstream. The human brain can construct the 3D scene from the 2D view presented to it and this construction is more pleasing than feeding a direct 3D image to the brain.

So, while I am still working on my projects pertaining to enhanced direct-view binoculars, I do not think that the resulting image will be more visually pleasing. It will be more "useful" for certain specific tasks such as hunting or identification of distant targets.

Attachment: Cristo Morto by the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna (around 1480 AD). Note the violent perspective, which foreshortens and dramatizes the recumbent figure, stressing the anatomical details.

Click to expand...

Hi Omid, you made some great points, and inspired a couple counter-points:

Sculpture is generally more expensive and requires floor space (cannot be hung on a wall). That may be part of the reason the scales are tilted toward painting.

If 3D cinema was as evolved as 2D, folks might find it more pleasing.

That said, would extra wide spacing of binocular barrels increase the 3D (modelling) affect?

I enjoy following your thread, thanks.
Jack

Foss said:

That said, would extra wide spacing of binocular barrels increase the 3D (modelling) affect?

Jack

Click to expand...

Hi Jack,

I talked to a film producer once about this with regard to how it might effect perception in a film, and his response was that in tests, folks perceived the wider spacing of the 2 cameras as making things 'feel' smaller. Perhaps based on our own eyes having a specific width range which helps calibrate our understanding of depth and scale. There have been binoculars on the market for decades with wider spacing than the eyes, have there not? Perhaps there is a threshold where scale perceptions are triggered that binocular objective spacing hasn't quite hit.


-Bill

There are a number of old threads here that discuss the illusion of lower magnification in traditional Porros with wide objective spacing compared to inline roofs, particularly at close distances. It vanishes when you close one eye.

As to enhanced stereo effect in hand held binoculars . . .

Zeiss was very early off the mark in exploring stereoscopic effect beyond that provided by the conventional outboard Porro prism configuration

As shown in post #31 above, the remarkable Relief Fernrohr was introduced in 1894 along with the original regular Porro prism binoculars
I’ve attached an additional image that gives a better idea of its size, from: http://www.historicacollectibles.co...lief-fenrohr-carl-zeiss-10x-con-custodia-1899

There was also the far more compact Teleplast dating from 1907 using Sprenger-Lemen roof prisms. See the image from Hans Braakhuis' site at: http://www.hansbraakhuis.nl/Nikon/Nikon.html
go down the left hand side of the page to 'verrekijkers' then across to the right and click on 'Mikron verrekijkers'

Finally the intriguing Stenor of 1914 also used S-L prisms. The images are from foto-hobby24-eu at: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Carl-Zeiss...624416?hash=item3fb8fe78a0:g:F1IAAOSwvcFcWZ-v


And for much of the 20th century, optical rangefinders both in monocular and binocular versions were essential military items, both in hand held and mounted versions
(the latter were often several meters long to enhance ranging accuracy; to see some examples, Google ‘military coincident image rangefinder’ and go to the Images option)

For a 'hand held' binocular version, see an image from Wikipedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereoscopic_rangefinder
- now that could revolutionise the birding experience!


John

And the stereoscopic rangefinder . . .

John A Roberts said:

And the stereoscopic rangefinder . . .

Click to expand...

"Well sir, the rangefinder says the approaching enemy is only 100 meters away, but they look MUCH further than that, I must say!"

Thanks for posting these John.

-Bill

There was a post war Japanese stereo binocular design whose objectives were at the end of double jointed tubes, somewhat more complex that the Zeiss foldable range finder shown by John Roberts. The maximum separation was at least 6-8".
One was offered on Ebay some years back, but I have no idea of its optical quality. Keeping everything collimated must have been challenging, but it should have offered superior stereo.

Binastro said:

Thanks Bill.

To stay on the topic of binoculars, I just saw Mercury with the 8.5x44 Swift HR/5 binocular for the first time this year after storm winds of 70mph plus and a very clear sky.
Then with my distance glasses held 5 inches in front of my eyes, and a few minutes later with normal distance glasses fit.

The car over the road is flatter now after the tree blew down on it. The fire brigade called in tree surgeons who chopped it up in 45 minutes. The tree not the car.
Luckily nobody was in the car.
I used the 8.5x44 binocular to see the car Sunday evening and follow the tree removal.

This tree was used by many birds to hide in its evergreen branches. They have lost a home.

I saw the two crows in our large oak tree branches last night with the 8.5x44 binocular about 20 feet from me. They seemed to hang on quite well in high wind. There are usually one or two crows over night in the tree. The binocular shows them well at 3 a.m.

I am fearful our 200 year old oak might succumb in the increasingly violent storms.
A British Airways Boeing 747 crossed from New York to London in 4 hours 56 minutes riding 250 mph jet stream winds. It reached 825mph over Newfoundland.
The previous record only set last year was 5 hours 13 minutes by a Norwegian aircraft.

I have an HD T.V. and a fairly good signal.
I don't see the aliasing? of skies with old films shot on film, but see it a lot on modern films.
It may be my T.V. but I think it is the digital cameras used.

Some digital movies use extreme colour enhancement and contrast. Although the resolution is high, the result looks unreal. These are shot on something like a Canon 5D at very low cost, sometimes $2,000 for the whole film.
The lenses used are normal consumer camera lenses shown by the typical out of focus street lights iris blades images.

Regards,
B.

Click to expand...

Hi Binastro, We had very high winds a few days ago as well. I did watch one Robin that landed in the top of a tree, between violent gusts. It's feathers were held fast to its body, as if it was wet, looking like a lumpy missile of sorts. When it took off, in a matter of moments, it was oriented about 45° to its trajectory as it sailed over my head. Tough to be a bird on a day like that.

You've inspired me to look for Mercury tomorrow. Looks like right after sunset is the best opportunity over here. Hopefully I won't be stuck in traffic at the time. I'll try some binoculars, maybe pull out a scope, but as you described, it will be a naked eye object if it is clear enough. Last time I looked at Venus a week or so ago, it was a half crescent. Seeing was pretty 'swimmy'..

When I lived in San Francisco, I remember once seeing Venus and Mercury above the silhouetted victorian rooftops across the street at dusk, along with the sliver of a new moon.

Sorry to hear about your neighbor's tree! (and car)

Cheers,

Bill

There are very few evergreen trees here and the local bird population has suddenly dropped with the loss of the tree.
It snapped about 10ft off the ground. It was about 30ft tall with dense foliage.
It was maybe 80 or 100 years old.
All types of birds used it from very small up to pigeons.

There is a very tall communications mast a distance from here. It has enormously bright white lights on top.
Maybe for aircraft avoidance or for illuminating the large railway yard.

I have tried to measure the distance with a 7x Leica laser rangefinder.
I only got one measurement of 312 metres. But this may be wrong.
I cannot find the tower on maps.
But it is difficult to measure because it is made of thin girders. It isn't solid.

Does anybody know of a modern, say 30cm baseline accurate visual rangefinder?

I had large astro scopes that could accurately measure up to one mile just by the focus position compared to say the Moon, but don't have them now.

My friend has a donkey ears Zeiss binocular, but nobody can collimate it. Perhaps not even Zeiss unless they have the right set up.
He sent it to a specialist, who made it worse.

B.

Try google earth. You can zoom way in at a pretty good res. and use their measuring tools.

-Bill

For some reason the tower seems to be missing on google earth.
Maybe it is further away than I think or I just cannot locate it, even though cars are easily seen.

It could for some reason look different from vertically above.

The RAF used to take stereo pairs and things were relatively easy to locate in a stereo viewer.

Laser rangefinders don't work if one cannot get a signal return.
That is why I would like a 30cm visual rangefinder.
The baseline on camera rangefinders isn't good enough, although a 1000mm telephoto lens might work.
I have an MTO lens.
Also an awful Zoomar 2,000mm f/14 compound mirror. It never stabilizes temperature wise.

I could set up a telescope on the roof, but it is a hassle.

B.

Binastro said:

For some reason the tower seems to be missing on google earth.
Maybe it is further away than I think or I just cannot locate it, even though cars are easily seen.

B.

Click to expand...

Try looking for a cast shadow. Doesn't always work, as they stitch photos together for the mosaic, but it might help.

I got up early this morning to try and see Mars, Jupiter and Saturn all lined up, but could only see Mars, as the hill behind me blocked the lower elevations. I could hear the Hermit Thrush chupping away in the foliage, and a little later, a Thrasher began a sort of jazz solo.. I could not see either bird.

The Moon, however, through a 65mm Leica Televid was lovely at 50x in its waning phase.

I'll look for Mercury tonight. ...with binoculars!

-Bill

Bill,
Before reading your post #99 I had another go at finding the tower.

From my knowledge of the area I thought it might be 800 metres away in the train marshaling yard.

So I carefully looked for shadows and found it.
The shadow is aligned with the train tracks, so wasn't seen earlier.

The distance to the tower is 820 metres.
The height may be 300ft or 250ft. Assuming the highest trees are 60ft and their shadow length. The Sun's elevation may be only 25 degrees or so.
However, now I know the distance I can accurately get the height using a spotting scope.

Although my laser rangefinder should measure to 1100 metres it assumes a good target.
The girder structure obviously didn't give a good return.

The 312m measure was probably to an intervening tree branch. I have even had distant returns from a single leaf rather than what I wanted to measure.

The lights are incredibly bright from 820 metres, but they allow train work at night.
But they should have a cut off rather than polluting the area for miles around.

Regards,
B.