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Vintage Binoculars (1 Viewer)

Thanks Optic_nut,

I have tried pretty much everything with those troublesome Jenoptems, had another go last week, I had them right, or thought so, they looked near as damn spot on, I looked through them, was fine, next day had a friend look through them, he said yep, perfect. I thought, at last !! Then 2 days later, I picked them up, looked, and thought, hang on, not quite right. Put them down awhile, went back, looked again, definite very slight double vision. Could not believe it, I almost took a hammer to them. I think I need another rest from them, I have never had so much trouble with a binocular as this one.
 
. An optical expert once told me he had a look at a friends binocular which was out of collimation.
After studying it a little bit he hit the binocular hard on I think the side of the boat and it was immediately in perfect collimation.
A fluke? Who knows. Perhaps he really did know where to hit it.

I've also heard of an old Rolleiflex camera repairer who took in a camera for repair and also he just hit it hard and affected an immediate and complete repair that took seconds.
 
Heh...that reminds me of a pair of ultra-wides I tried the banging on, bit by bit.
They went way out, I reversed 180 degrees and bumped, and so on. Got perfect
alignment. But the punchline was, I had cracked a prism. The contrast was shot on
one side.

Those Jenoptems do sound like they have shifting prisms. If it comes down to a therapist
it might save money gutting them, but it's no-win any way you go. Once I get
monocular conversions down to more of an art units like that will be easier to cope with.
 
Swift-belmont-8x30-ex Wide Field

Picked up another cheapy, nice Swift 8x30, this Belmont is in mint condition, looks unused, and it also looks very much like the Swift Avocet model, but this Belmont has a much wider FOV given as 525ft@1000yds. Comparing it with the Swift Ascot 8x30, the wider FOV of the Belmont is not readily noticeable and they seem to me to give a very similar view, with the Ascot being a tad sharper. It does not have the usual Swift US Pattern body, but is built in the German style with front prism covers. I have heard it said that the Avocet is comparable with the Zeiss Jenoptem, so I can only assume that must be a better glass than this Belmont, it is by no means bad, but certainly no match for the Jenoptem.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/95019762@N07/
 

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. Dear Ben,
the swift Belmont 8×30 extra wide-angle seems interesting.
Here in my hands I have one of my regular binoculars which I use if I ever need to snatch a wide field of view of something, perhaps to pick up Mercury in Twilight.
but it is an 8×40 not an 8×30.

The markings on the rear housings seem similar to your 8×30 with the same green stripe and swift on the left. On the right hand side it says Belmont Deluxe 8×40 widefield 472 feet at 1000 yards. On the bottom of the hinge it says Japan JB 207 80-6033. It has a very worn silver sticker on the hinge and has had a fair amount of use but it works very well.
Of course it is not modern, and the exit pupil is very square i.e. the prisms are cutting off part of the view.
It is very comfortable to use although the eye relief is minimal.
It has short rubber eye cups.

The big difference is that it is of the American design with one-piece body.
it just lies around ready to be picked up in seconds.

Your 8×30 seems to have a wider field of view.
If it is clear this evening I will remeasure the field of view of the 8×40.
 
. The 8×40 Belmont deluxe has a field of 8.79°. This is with the short rubber eyecups extended. They had become stiff with age so cannot be easily bent down. With them extended 8.5° of the field is easily seen and by pressing down a bit one can see the full 8.8°.
However, star images at the edge are very distorted into lines parallel with the field stop.

But the constellation of Orion seen 15 minutes ago looks pretty good with this binocular which is easily used and comfortable. Clear night but a lot of light pollution.

The claimed field as written on the binocular equates to 9.01° or 9° so the real field is a bit less than this but still very useful. I don't think that even if I cut the rubber eyecups off I could get 9° from this binocular with the correct IPD.
 
Bencw said:
(...) it also looks very much like the Swift Avocet model (...)
Click to expand...

I'm curious what this Avocet really is. Are you sure it is a Swift binocular all right? Recently an Avocet showed up on eBay and the seller advertized it as a Swift but I couldn't detect the slightest sign of a Swift trademark.
Do you have pictures, possibly?

Renze
 
Hi Binastro,

I think the 8x40 Belmont is probably a better binocular overall than my 8x30, I have a few Swifts and wanted to try a Belmont, but would have preferred the 8x40, much more comfortable to use. I only bought this as it was going cheap, mint condition and wide FOV + fully multi coated, it has hard rubber eye cups not the fold back type, I would say it is quite similar to the greens by swift I have but being an 8x40 that is more comfortable to use. I have just bought unseen, an Audubon HR5, the model 804, fully multi coated version, 8.5 x 44 extra wide field 430ft @ 1000yds. It was stated to be virtually as new, only used once and stored. Not arrived as yet,this was definitely not a cheapy, so i'm hoping it will be as described and clean inside. I will post in the swift section when it comes, I was really pleased to find it so hope I am not disappointed.
 
Renze de Vries said:
I'm curious what this Avocet really is. Are you sure it is a Swift binocular all right? Recently an Avocet showed up on eBay and the seller advertized it as a Swift but I couldn't detect the slightest sign of a Swift trademark.
Do you have pictures, possibly?

Renze
Click to expand...

Hi Renze,
No I dont have an Avocet, I think I saw the same one as you, a Swift Avocet 8x30WA Deluxe? that was where I saw the comparison with the Jenoptem, but I just remembered the picture was very,very similar to my Belmont, the green stripe, and Avocet written exactly the same on it as Belmont on my one. I just had a look and the picture is gone from that ad now. It sold for a healthy £63 so more than 5 times as much as I paid for the Belmont.
 
Bencw said:
Hi Renze,
No I dont have an Avocet, I think I saw the same one as you, a Swift Avocet 8x30WA Deluxe? that was where I saw the comparison with the Jenoptem, but I just remembered the picture was very,very similar to my Belmont, the green stripe, and Avocet written exactly the same on it as Belmont on my one. I just had a look and the picture is gone from that ad now. It sold for a healthy £63 so more than 5 times as much as I paid for the Belmont.
Click to expand...

Congrats with your FMC Audubon, yes give us your impressions.

Avocet: let's forget about it being of Swift origin. eBay sellers can be very inspired.

Renze
 
I just...95%...completed a restoration on an extraordinary pair of binoculars.
I had to fix some cross-threading, a botched eyepiece, and a sheared set-screw,
but it's performing amazingly well.

It's an old AMC Model 603, 7x35, fully coated, 580ft @1000yds.
Frame marks J-E3 and (L or J?) B146
There was dirt in the oculars but the view was incredibly flat and sharp almost
edge to edge...amazing for that FOV. I took apart the eyepiece with the spanner,
and the optics were beyond what I had seen before... a total of two achromatic
groups and one one-piece, so 5 elements instead of the usual 3. No wonder the
fileld was all flat and sharp. There is a downside: you effectively have two
field lens surfaces so it's more sensitive to smutz. I have to go back in later
for some bits, but they are tiny and black, so no harm done to the view.
I got lucky on objectives and prisms....no problems, just the outer surface to clean.
Looks like big round-eyed BAK4's.


Probably the finest extra-wide I have seen so far. Way past most others.
Something to keep your eyes out for at auctions. If you sent it for cleaning
it might be well worth it. (I'm not volunteering, though: still not experienced or
equipped enough). They have no iris to speak of, so I'm going to make short
hoods out of felt for the front outside. A little glare otherwise.

I'm wondering what this model is supposed to be a clone of.
Somebody might know from the 5-element eyepiece clue.
 
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Hi Optic-nut,
Sounds a nice binocular, I have not seen the 603 model, only the 601 which is quite nice but has a narrower FOV than yours, is the 603 also lightweight like the 601 ?

Touching wood on the jenoptem, have aligned it again last week, and so far seems to have stayed aligned, tried it every day since, together with a few bounces on the mattress to see if anything moves and it has been ok.
 
Ah...I put in a piece on a protoype laser collimation test in the general binoculars
section. I felt sheepish about mentioning lasers as if that would magically work.
The nice thing is that you can see the misalignment consistently. I suspect the times
I have seen collimation "come and go" it has been my eyes being able to repair the view
and then not being able to, depending on fatigue and time of day.

One thing to make
sure you do: always mark the placement of the objective cell before taking it out
to clean, and avoid taking apart the cell when possible.
I'd like to make the laser rig more "real-time". Perhaps set up two laser-dowels
on forked supports and use pager vibrator motors to make a Lissajous figure out
of the eyepiece.

Yes: the AMC 603s are lightweight, in fact (for their type). The binocs are serialized,
so I suppose that hints at premium work. The grease has gone 'black wax', which is
better than going gluey, but makes these little particles. Beautiful view though. I need
some more serious grease...maybe teflon infused gun grease..
 
I had looked around about lithium grease, and some of the gun nuts
think it's the kind that turn's to yellow glue with the decades. It might be
that they used cheaper stuff. There is probably good and bad lithium grease.
I use candle wax on the cell threads and rings..lovely smooth and clean,
if you don't bump around a lot. But I need the glide and dust-trapping for these
oculars. The gunners seem to favor variants of car bearing grease. "purple stuff";

If you do run into stuck grease, a light heating (130-F or 54-C) does wonders.
I wrecked a few mini-binocs before discovering that in an article. The little bare-knuckle
'spy' reverse porros are glued half the time, and many opera glasses.
Then mop off with WD-40.

Most of my focusers refreshed with
drop-of-WD40/work-focus-full-10-times/wait-4 hours.
This one was OK for friction but sheds bits...going chalky.
 
Yes, I have had a few stuck diopters where the grease has gone to glue, one just would not budge, an old orbito 10x35, the plastic eye cup housing came of easily but the metal diopter movement underneath was solid, not heat nor WD worked, in th end I used the dremil to cut a slot in it and prised it off, once cleaned and greased it worked ok, the outer plastic part held it place. Candle wax is a good idea, never thought of that, I often use it on saw blades.
 
Slotting with the Dremel...now that's really time for "hot lights and cold steel",
as the surgeons say. Congrats! I might try a 24-hr acetone soak if I run into glue
again.
 
Crown Royal excuse me, Freudian slip, Royal Crown 7X50. J-B15 J-E20 TOC

Tokyo Optical, these are excellent binoculars, no mention of coatings though they give a strong blue tint to the light reflected from the front of the objectives. Great eye relief with the cups removed.
 

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Ah, the independent-focus, lamp-black-interior type.
I have some a bit like that, "Patrician". Very quiet, very sharp.
Made into two monoculars. Fantastic for the night sky
and 'show me' setups with a tripod.
They cleaned up extremely well. The coating seems like an
early version of the "UVC" coatings. Does not yellow things much.
The biggies seem to last better.
 
perterra said:
Crown Royal excuse me, Freudian slip, Royal Crown 7X50. J-B15 J-E20 TOC

Tokyo Optical, these are excellent binoculars, no mention of coatings though they give a strong blue tint to the light reflected. Great eye relief with the cups removed.
Click to expand...

nice binocular, 7x50 is such comfortable viewing.
 
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