Nikon SE vs Everything. (1 Viewer)

OK so this was interesting. I took out my EXs daughter hiking today. I've been teaching her how to use binoculars. In the second part of the day I put the EIIs on her and let her compare them to the Swaro EL I was carrying. I didn't tell her about them, I just asked her with her young 27 year old eyes which she thought was the better binocular. Which was sharper. She picked the EII by a little bit she said. So then it was the Ultravids turn and she said the same.

Then I told her what they all cost.:-O

Hard to beat the EII. :king:

WJC said:

Hi, Paddy7:

I don’t know about “gnat’s nudgers.” But I do know that when errors in manufacture are off by only .001-inch, the result can sometimes be less than pleasing (in designing optics: A Little Dab’ll Do Ya)—depending on whether the error is in thickness, spacing, or radius of curvature. And, my graphic example had 24 places for errors to creep in, each reacting with all the others. I was in no way throwing stones. But, believe it or not, there are folks on here who would appreciate knowing about such. I believe their needs are valid, too. :cat:

Bill

Click to expand...

A gnat's nudger is the diameter of that particular insect's male acroutrements, if you know what i mean.
I take your point entirely - there are a number of places in which variability can creep in; however, for all of them simultaneously to veer negative? Surely we're playing the odds game here....and we have to assume some level of QC, however lightweight it might be. All companies (optics or otherwise) have to take responsibility for their reputation, when three or four lousy comments in reputable forums like this can undo several gazillions of marketing budget...

Just read your post again, and taken another meaning -
you mean that one error in one of the 24 or so possibilities throws the whole shebang out of the window, with that one miscalculation being magnified by the others as it passes through the optical chain?

"I think if you're going to throw in qualified tech and quality control people, you should also throw in understanding and caring".

Both points are poignant in this day and age, I am sure if I went into Captains looking for a Swift, before the glass left the shop with me it was in alignment and in proper working order. I feel that way about products today, lack of paying attention to detail, and not caring about the quality of work. I wonder how many premium glass (%s) of them, have one or more problems waiting to show their face after a couple of months of use, and will this get worse down the road? The package delivery business will be way up.

Andy W.

"Nikon SE vs Everything"
If they're working for you, then great.
I've found that most "Everything" else is easier to use, despite the view, when acquired.

black crow said:

....or am I chasing a fantasy?

Click to expand...

Yes.

paddy7 said:

Just read your post again, and taken another meaning -
you mean that one error in one of the 24 or so possibilities throws the whole shebang out of the window, with that one miscalculation being magnified by the others as it passes through the optical chain?

Click to expand...

No, not at all; they interact with each other. In correcting one aberration, another could get worse ... or, 3 might get worse while another might get a little better and another a lot better. To understand what is going on, you really need to watch the numbers as the graphics change. What if working with a known instrument, the designer opens up the field stop to make those who love a larger field of view, happy. He or she might only be able to do so by changing a bunch of other parameters and letting some aberrations grow. It’s whatever the customer wants OR what the manufacturer thinks the customer wants.

Some people go nuts for the wide field offered by the Mk 41 (10 degrees) and the Mk 43 (11.5 degrees) of WWII while paying little attention to the lack of modern coatings or the fact that the wide field starts getting soft just about 2/3rds of the way off axis. I, on the other hand, liked the Swift Ultra Lites, Celestron Ultimas, and Adlerblick fernglassers (all the same on the inside). They had small fields, but the fields they had were superb—and relatively inexpensive. (The Adlerblick field got bigger when they replaced the EPs).

Attached is a spot diagram for an image at the edge of a 1.5-degree field. It was for a 6-inch Houghton telescope I was designing back in 2002. The circle (an Airy disc) is a composite of the sizes of each primary wavelength. And, I have designed better. BUT, would it matter? Like going for the grail of “Alphas” ... NO! That spot could be 6 times its size and no mortal would be able to SEE the difference. Would the system be “better”? Yes. Would it matter? No.

Some have indicated that a good and caring QC guy could see to things. BUT, that doesn't always happen.

Bill

dries1 said:

"I think if you're going to throw in qualified tech and quality control people, you should also throw in understanding and caring".

Both points are poignant in this day and age, I am sure if I went into Captains looking for a Swift, before the glass left the shop with me it was in alignment and in proper working order. I feel that way about products today, lack of paying attention to detail, and not caring about the quality of work. I wonder how many premium glass (%s) of them, have one or more problems waiting to show their face after a couple of months of use, and will this get worse down the road? The package delivery business will be way up.

Andy W.

Click to expand...

Yes, I checked each instrument (over $200) personally on a collimator before it left the shop. Some say you can’t make any money going the extra mile. That’s their tail; I sit on mine. One large optical retailer is advertising he is the only retailer in the United States with a collimator. I guess he has forgotten that I had a 7-inch Mk 5, a 12-inch Mk 5, and a Fujinon U.B.M.M. and I didn’t take them with me. He has also apparently forgotten that he used to tell Cory and me he didn’t need a collimator because he could “eyeball collimation” to 100-power. It seems, he had also never heard of spatial accommodation.

But then, knowing what you’re talking about sure can keep the thin skinned angry with you. :cat:

Bill

When I hear statements that collimation can be done by eyeball, my question is always why were collimators invented, and what is their purpose. .............crickets.

Andy W.

For the rest of us who can't manage it.B

dries1 said:

When I hear statements that collimation can be done by eyeball, my question is always why were collimators invented, and what is their purpose. .............crickets.

Andy W.

Click to expand...

Hi, Andy:

Although this fellow is a major optics retailer—mainly binoculars—he is just now beginning to learn what he should have known before starting his business. Cory Suddarth, was with me the day I took a call from another fellow who had been a repair manager at his company for many years. The essence of his call went something like this:

“I just don’t understand it; I’ll get the binocular collimated, but when I move one of the barrels, it’s off again.”

He was right; he didn’t understand it. This fellow was a conscientious technician and merchant. But being unfamiliar with the basics of 3-axis collimation, and following today’s popular but flawed alignment techniques, he and his staff had been selling conditional alignment as collimation to his repair customers all those years. It was this experience that caused me to first suggest there’s a big difference between 20 years of experience and one year of experience 20 times.


However, even many big-time optical engineers in the country are equally clueless. You say, how can that be. I recently asked a simple question of a group of optical engineers. Part of my query pointed out that my question “is about POSITION and has nothing to do with IMAGE QUALITY.” Yet, this group continued to tell me things I had known since I was a puppy and continued to tell me about wave-front error, OPD plots, and the like. I kept telling them that they were OVER-THINKING the question, but they couldn’t wrap their minds around the simplicity of the question.

If this stuff was hard, I couldn’t do it. Learning the whole process would take 5 minutes—ten if you asked a lot of unnecessary questions. But too many think they already know it all and won’t pay attention. Pontification is so much easier than research. :cat:

Bill

PS Doing collimation by eyeball is what the myriad screw-tweakers are doing when they SAY they have collimated their binocular.

Being equipped with basic high school physics (and that 40 odd years ago) regarding real, virtual, inverted images and concave/convex lens types, i cannot input towards the technical side of this. However, what i find interesting (and perhaps am on safer ground) is the quantity of the production runs (daily or weekly) of a particular model by the established binocular companies.

Would it be beyond the capability of the QC department to keep tabs on an individual piece? I'm just thinking that - if QC is your job, and you have an eye to your own job security, and the pressure companies are under in a fiercely competitive field, and your own professional pride - wouldn't you do it as well as you were capable? The serial number must have an audit trail, back to the day/time the binocular was produced; if several lemons are returned, there would be some form of internal process within the company to see what went wrong where, surely?
It can't be like being QC for a line of plastic bottles, where thousands may be produced a day..?

A further corporate point, referring to Bill's point about 'going the extra mile..' having been loosely involved with an educational programme including the study of corporate strategy, there are a number of models that identify this factor as being key to securing a company's core, repeat custom, and the encouragement of 'word of mouth' marketing. That is of course in these modern times, when such things have to be studied and modelled, rather than just done because services were more personal, perhaps smaller-scale and bespoke.

The number of times the Swarovski after-sales is mentioned as a compelling factor for buying its products is a case in point.

paddy7 said:

A further corporate point, referring to Bill's point about 'going the extra mile..' having been loosely involved with an educational programme including the study of corporate strategy, there are a number of models that identify this factor as being key to securing a company's core, repeat custom, and the encouragement of 'word of mouth' marketing. That is of course in these modern times, when such things have to be studied and modelled, rather than just done because services were more personal, perhaps smaller-scale and bespoke.

The number of times the Swarovski after-sales is mentioned as a compelling factor for buying its products is a case in point.

Click to expand...

Hi, Paddy:

That Glorious “Extra Mile.”

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” — Albert Schweitzer

I was repeatedly told I couldn’t make any money doing things the way I did—going that extra mile. But, in 1991 my way was selected to fill the business section of The Herald of Everett, Washington, a town 30 miles to the north. Three years earlier Captain’s had 8 binoculars in a cabinet—some junk—but by the time the article came out, my shop was on its way to becoming a destination store for “all things optical” on the west coast, I was getting repair work from across the country, was soon to have my own floor with a Lynnwood location in the works. And did I do it by the usual method of sucking up to the corporate powers that be?:

“When it comes to optics, think Bill Cook. ... Bill is not out to protect brands and factories when they continually mislead customers about their products. Instead, he tells it like it is—straight and honest—EVEN WHEN MANUFACTURERS GET UPSET WHEN THEY HEAR THE TRUTH.”—Alan Hale, Co-founder and former CEO of Celestron.

Alan knows; Celestron was in my crosshairs more than once.

I often get tarred and feathered on binocular forums for being self-serving, condescending, arrogant, and worse. But I would like to comment on those things.

1) If you’ve done it, it “ain’t braggin’." —George S. Patton and a few dozen others from baseball to business.

2) “Self-serving?” Never! Quite the opposite. I’ve used what I have known to help others. I was the first to openly fight Steiner’s Auto-Focus fraud—with the nerve to call it what it was—and have continued to fight to get people to understand what binocular “collimation” is and is not, with a thousand lesser battles strewn in between. I sometimes struggle to help my neighbor even as some gather to scar my back—as they have sometimes done on this forum.

A Better World?

Research shows that today’s average 20-year old will have “3 careers and 8 jobs” before leaving the workforce. Tell me, how likely is it such a person—thinking mostly of financial reward—will develop the expertise in any field to be able to offer solid advice of that field to his neighbor, should they request it?

Long before I knew of the Schweitzer quote, I followed the mantra: “Go into a profession you love and you will never have to ‘work’ a day in your life.” Of, how true that turned out to be. And wouldn’t the world be a better place if more people tried it?

Going the extra mile is more pleasant AND profitable if you look outside yourself to see the scenery along the way, enjoy helping others, and count your blessings with every step. :cat:

Bill

That's you in the pic then? Being in the UK, i'm not aware of the locations, but certainly the extra mile, reliability, honesty and the personal touch is not something you find in these days of mega-corps, spreadsheets, profit forecasts etc.
Perhaps, however, there are folks working at some of these optical companies that have the same zeal and enthusiasm for the sector? When you find what might be the smaller companies, or recent set-ups (prepared to be corrected, but e.g. GPO, Maven, Kite etc) they must have that same drive? It must be a great risk of capital to throw yourself into the bearpit and hope to snaffle some of the market off the bigger boys?
When much younger, the 'safe' jobs were banking, insurance etc. but now they're not, and career changes are often enforced rather than chosen; but surely optical design or quality control is not something you just wander in and have a go at, having answered an ad reading 'person with good eyes wanted'?
I'm sure there must be many in the industry who are there because they love doing it? There must be easier ways to make a living if they didn't...

This is a long way from the discussion regarding the SE, i've noticed, but don't the old Forum wander about? Like a discussion in a pub.....

My success mantra - which i'm quite proud of, having thought it up myself, is 'Success is having the respect of those you respect.' Haven't copyrighted it yet.

Sounds fair!
Both the E2 and especially the SE have small AFOV... compared to other old Porros ;-)
I wonder what you could do with new machine learning and a copy of Zemax... new designs, better spec, less reinvent tolerances?... better AND cheaper? We ain’t going to improve things in the coatings department.

PEterW

paddy7 said:

That's you in the pic then? Being in the UK, i'm not aware of the locations, but certainly the extra mile, reliability, honesty and the personal touch is not something you find in these days of mega-corps, spreadsheets, profit forecasts etc.
Perhaps, however, there are folks working at some of these optical companies that have the same zeal and enthusiasm for the sector? When you find what might be the smaller companies, or recent set-ups (prepared to be corrected, but e.g. GPO, Maven, Kite etc) they must have that same drive? It must be a great risk of capital to throw yourself into the bearpit and hope to snaffle some of the market off the bigger boys?
When much younger, the 'safe' jobs were banking, insurance etc. but now they're not, and career changes are often enforced rather than chosen; but surely optical design or quality control is not something you just wander in and have a go at, having answered an ad reading 'person with good eyes wanted'?
I'm sure there must be many in the industry who are there because they love doing it? There must be easier ways to make a living if they didn't...

This is a long way from the discussion regarding the SE, i've noticed, but don't the old Forum wander about? Like a discussion in a pub.....

My success mantra - which i'm quite proud of, having thought it up myself, is 'Success is having the respect of those you respect.' Haven't copyrighted it yet.

Click to expand...

Yes, the chump ... I mean the chap is me. The location was Seattle and Everett was thirty miles north of there; think of London to Hertford. There ARE a FEW others to whom it is a way of life, like that yeti Suddarth in Oklahoma—who left me for $4 an hour ... dirtbag. (Lee, tell admin to back off: he’s my best friend) He’s a pup as sick as me. Most, however, have been fired, or are being retrained because their bosses “KNOW” you can’t make any money going that extra mile, OR at least THINK they know! The consumer and the nation suffer because of what they don’t know.

At $120 per hour—with a one hour minimum—I probably had the most expensive repair facility in the United States. Yet, because of that extra-mile philosophy, I had to turn work away.

THE GOOD SIDE: I didn’t have to talk a great deal with those who came in with $49 plastic ZOOM binoculars and were prepared to give me $15 to repair their paperweight to a condition it didn’t enjoy right out of the factory.

THE BETTER SIDE: I got to do hundreds of FREEBIES and had hundreds of teaching opportunities that others would have charged for (preposition at the end and all). Example: a severely bent objective housing was a fantastic way to make good money with next to no work. But then, I was allowed to do things my way. While the customer waited and watched, I marked the housing, removed it, cleaned the threads, reseated it, walked over to the U.B.M.M. so the customer could hear me babbling on all the while. The conditional alignment job I had done was explained. If the collimator said it was within tolerance, I asked the customer’s opinion. Their week to two-week repair job took about 15-20 minutes. What do I owe you?

According my repair criteria you owe me $120. BUT, Merry Christmas! The letter of the law said $120. The spirit of the law said ... “parts and labor come to about ... have a good day. Oh, yeah, I either want your undying loyalty or your first-born son. But, with you being 73, I’ll take that loyalty thing.” They said I couldn’t make any money doing things like that. But, the fact was I couldn’t give stuff away fast enough to keep it from coming back to me in spades.

Captain’s sold in 2014 and most of the things I created are gone now as the 117-year old business shifted a bit; gone the way of the dodo and for EXACTLY the same reason.:cat:

Bill

wllmspd said:

Sounds fair!
Both the E2 and especially the SE have small AFOV... compared to other old Porros ;-)
I wonder what you could do with new machine learning and a copy of Zemax... new designs, better spec, less reinvent tolerances?... better AND cheaper? We ain’t going to improve things in the coatings department.

PEterW

Click to expand...

For the cost of Zemax, today, one could own half a dozen of the world's best binos. :cat:

Bill

What? Kicked to death by sailors? Odd way to end a business...
But then it goes to show the business model i referred to earlier worked; it might be the BCG Matrix or something....
I bet your 30 miles north of Seattle took a damn sight less time to drive than London to Hertford.
When i worked in recording studios and it was time for the mixdown, i took the opposite approach with the clients. I'd say 'the next hour is going to bore you to death while i sort out the drums with compressors, gates, eq etc. and you're going to want to comment and i don't want you to. There's time for that later.'
That actually was going the extra mile, because all the jabber which had no meaning at that time would have cost them another £60 or so of studio hire.

Without getting too much into it, i've seen conditions change in businesses - new management who think an idea that was dumped 15 years ago is an innovation they just thought of - the business changes, and the good ones leave. Just hang in there, and it will all come round again.
I still think there are enough people who get pleasure from doing 'a good job' for the whole messy world to struggle through.
A message of hope on a Spring evening!

wllmspd said:

Sounds fair!
Both the E2 and especially the SE have small AFOV... compared to other old Porros ;-)
I wonder what you could do with new machine learning and a copy of Zemax... new designs, better spec, less reinvent tolerances?... better AND cheaper? We ain’t going to improve things in the coatings department.

PEterW

Click to expand...

Hi,

while you're right that there's old porros with huge fields, the difference with the E2 is that unlike the old super wide angle bins the edges in the E2 are not terrible but quite usable (I won't talk about the SE - their field is not really very wide and it is a strong contender for best edge performance).

Well corrected super wide angle EPs exist nowadays but tend to have many groups and are neither small nor light.

For an example what can be done if money, weight and size are not an object ,see the Nikon WX series. But they're not exactly good for birding...

Joachim

paddy7 said:

What? Kicked to death by sailors? Odd way to end a business...
But then it goes to show the business model i referred to earlier worked; it might be the BCG Matrix or something....
I bet your 30 miles north of Seattle took a damn sight less time to drive than London to Hertford.
When i worked in recording studios and it was time for the mixdown, i took the opposite approach with the clients. I'd say 'the next hour is going to bore you to death while i sort out the drums with compressors, gates, eq etc. and you're going to want to comment and i don't want you to. There's time for that later.'
That actually was going the extra mile, because all the jabber which had no meaning at that time would have cost them another £60 or so of studio hire.

Without getting too much into it, i've seen conditions change in businesses - new management who think an idea that was dumped 15 years ago is an innovation they just thought of - the business changes, and the good ones leave. Just hang in there, and it will all come round again.
I still think there are enough people who get pleasure from doing 'a good job' for the whole messy world to struggle through.
A message of hope on a Spring evening!

Click to expand...

Hi, Paddy:

First, the business didn’t end. It sold, moved, and is now just Captain’s Supplies—the “Nautical” was taken out of it. But, from 1897 to 1965 it was Max Kuner, Nautical Opticians. So, a name change was not really out of line. But, in 1995 a business consultant told the owners that without my contributions in optics the business wouldn’t have gotten THAT far.

But the new owner knows nothing about optics and is divesting of the instruments, books, accessories, accoutrements, and salespeople as quickly as possible. The astronomy customers will go to Anacortes and the birders will buy from the Audubon Store or REI. The owner will continue selling Chinese Steiners because he can get a good margin and mariners will buy anything with a German name on the side ... if the price is low enough.

Fortunately, they still have the marine-oriented Fujinons. When I arrived the FMTR-SX was sold as a special-order “novelty” item. When I left, we had them in stock and they sold every day. I should take up drinking, so I could cry in my beer. It’s none of my business, now. But, I think it’s human nature to regret the loss of years of work. If he’s happy, I must be happy for him.

Your comment about that 30 miles is logical ... what with you bein’ a ferner an all. But, you see while most Interstate highways in America are used to get people around faster, the I-5 corridor around Seattle is used ... AS A BLOODY PARKING LOT! So, it’s kind’a iffy.

And for spring ... we were not issued one. We went from snow to Atlanta summer without the bugs and humidity.
:cat:

Bill