Heresy! (1 Viewer)

. Glass is not for ever. Some telescopes have glass that had devitrified after about 100 years or so, and a modern objective had to be made. This is with old glass.
I have some lenses from about 1880, which are fine. However, modern glass is unlikely to last very well especially the high index glasses. Some of the original Canon 300 mm F/2.8 lenses are useless, but I think the element is crystal rather than glass.

Anyway, nowadays people do not expect their cameras to last or be useful for more than about 10 years.
My main camera is a compact viewfinder camera that I just keep in my pocket without a case. It is maybe six or seven years old. I prefer it because the files are small.
I don't need to print bigger than A 4, so why should I carry around a big heavy camera.

I have been using image stabilised binoculars for about 15 years. They use batteries, so what. Digital cameras use batteries. My 1960s Minolta SRT needed a Mercury battery for metering. You use batteries in your laptops, your cars and everything else. And anyway the image stabilised binoculars have superior optics even without the battery.

I am a dinosaur, but I am quite happy to use modern technology if it gives me an advantage.

There will come a time, and I don't think very far into the future, when digital binoculars will be so good that if you want them to mimic the best optical binocular, you will have that option and probably won't know the difference.

Just be sure to simply turn on your IS binoculars once a year.
If they use batteries, they have capacitors.
(and of course, take out batteries when not powering)
The issue is just long-term storage...
Grandpa's closet."

I have opera glasses going back to the late 1800s and prismatic binoculars
dating to the 1910s, but I haven't seen glass trouble yet, except the
Canada Balsam drying out on the opera glasses.

Actually, coatings were discovered when ground objectives grew them,
after 70-100 yrs. Maybe that' why the few uncoateds seem oddly bright.


"
I don't need to print bigger than A 4, so why should I carry around a big heavy camera.
"
This is an excellent point. Add to that: most photos are viewed on a computer, and that's 1-2 MP for the screen.
I downsample, then bump contrast and saturation a tad to toss out the digicam noise.
20MP--->2MP, 250KB. A superior picture on the screen, and 1/20th the size...
And you get the chance to throw out the junk shots as well.

From a camera point-of-view....

There is currently an ongoing debate on which is better, the OVF (Optical ViewFinder) or the EVF (Electronic Viewfinder).

The OVF has a direct optical link to/through the lens of the camera, just like typical binoculars. The better ones are pentaprism design, and the cheaper/poorer ones are pentamirror design. Proponents of OVF say they have a much brighter and more stunning view as compared to EVFs.

The EVFs typically mirror what is on the LCD of the camera and is what the sensor is seeing. It is an electronic link to the lens via the sensor, not a direct optical link. The main advantage to the EVF is that you can overlay data on the EVF that is pertinent to the photographer, such as focus peaking, histograms, etc., including "live view" in which you can directly see if your shot will be under- or over-exposed. EVFs are continually improving (I have a camera with an EVF of 2,764,000 pixels (Panasonic GX7, introduced in October 2013). EVFs can also offer a stabilized view (again, what the sensor sees).

There are also a few hybrid OVF/EVFs in the wild, now....

For cameras, it is all about sensor size. Larger sensors collect more light in the same amount of time than what a smaller sensor can collect (like using a 7x50 as opposed to a 8x32 bino). In bright daylight, it doesn't make much difference. In low-light conditions, it makes a huge difference. Larger sensors also tend to have more dynamic range, and the depth-of-field (DoF) can be adjusted moreso than on a smaller sensor. Most photographers relish a shallow DoF for artistic shots and to draw the viewer's eye to the subject that is in focus. On the flip side, most bino users relish a very deep DoF so they can better take in their view and the surroundings.

But can we eliminate the sensor side of the equation? The EVF takes its information from the sensor. Would we require a larger sensor in order to get a brighter view through the EVF, or are there other ways to illuminate the EVF? Larger sensors require larger objectives (lens). If we can illuminate the EVF and use a smaller sensor, the lens can be much smaller, saving a lot of weight and volume. These are the technical things to think through...

My GX7 camera has a feature that lets you momentarily see a bright rendition of a dark scene to allow focusing before the shot is taken (this occurs while the camera is trying to autofocus). I don't know what trickery they use to enable you to "see in the dark", but it may lead down the road to brighter EVFs for using in low-light viewing.

As an aside.... since a camera can record a view over time (say, leave the shutter open for 30 seconds), it can essentially give you a viewable picture that was taken in near darkness. As an example, I can go out on my deck when it is near total darkness (starlight and maybe some ambient light from neighbor's house), set up the camera on a tripod, leave the shutter open for 30 seconds or so, look at the photo and it looks almost as if the photo was taken in daylight (although colors are very muted). This is with a micro-four-thirds sensor and a good lens (1.4 aperture). If you are not in a hurry to get a good low-light view of what you are looking at, this may be an avenue worth pursuing. A larger sensor can give you a useable (although somewhat monochromatic) nighttime view in a much shorter timespan, but again, lenses will need to be much larger.

Stabilization is also getting better. Olympus has just introduced their EM5 Mk II camera that will take eight photos while shifting the sensor 1/2-pixel between shots. Thus, you get a 40mp photo from a 16mp sensor, with greater dynamic range and better colors. However, it requires that the camera be on a tripod because the whole process takes around one second to occur. In a recent interview, an official with Olympus thinks that very soon they will be able to accomplish this feat in 1/160th of a second, allowing those shots to be handheld. Quite a feat for a (relatively) inexpensive mid-size-sensor camera.

Binastro said:

. Glass is not for ever. Some telescopes have glass that had devitrified after about 100 years or so, and a modern objective had to be made. This is with old glass.
I have some lenses from about 1880, which are fine. However, modern glass is unlikely to last very well especially the high index glasses. Some of the original Canon 300 mm F/2.8 lenses are useless, but I think the element is crystal rather than glass.

Anyway, nowadays people do not expect their cameras to last or be useful for more than about 10 years.
My main camera is a compact viewfinder camera that I just keep in my pocket without a case. It is maybe six or seven years old. I prefer it because the files are small.
I don't need to print bigger than A 4, so why should I carry around a big heavy camera.

I have been using image stabilised binoculars for about 15 years. They use batteries, so what. Digital cameras use batteries. My 1960s Minolta SRT needed a Mercury battery for metering. You use batteries in your laptops, your cars and everything else. And anyway the image stabilised binoculars have superior optics even without the battery.

I am a dinosaur, but I am quite happy to use modern technology if it gives me an advantage.

There will come a time, and I don't think very far into the future, when digital binoculars will be so good that if you want them to mimic the best optical binocular, you will have that option and probably won't know the difference.

Click to expand...

These threads about Digital Binoculars always remind me of a quote from "Life is a Miracle: An Essay against Modern Superstition," which I have already cited here a couple of times.

I think it bears repeating.

It was written in 1999 by Wendell Berry, an American farmer, writer, and thinker: "It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines."

Bob

ceasar said:

Re: Digital binoculars with any amount of pixels.

I'm not interested in seeing what a machine sees and interprets for me to see.

There are probably many people who see this the way I do.

Bob

Click to expand...

Hi Bob:

I certainly agree! But, while even the mass-storage gurus say the best archival storage is ink on paper, it should be remembered that Mark Twain had a chance to invest in the telephone, but he didn't think anyone in town except his publisher and a few bankers would need one.

Boy, if he could only see a class of 10th graders today! :t:

Bill

And Edison thought flicking cards were good enough for movies....til a Frenchman blew that away.
Heh....so he bought back what he denied.
True, people do get stuck, even in the middle of a revolution.

I think that I am a hybrid. I definitely want to live as a creature and not a machine. However, the youngsters around me seem to want to live as machines.
But I will adopt a modern machine if it fits in with my way of life. Also I will generally wait till the new machine has proved itself to be useful and reliable.

As to glass lasting forever, it seems that all glass corrodes, but at different rates. And some glasses scratch easily and some don't. For instance the Leitz Summar lenses scratch easily and can become almost opaque, where other lenses were much more durable.
I've seen aerial lenses from the 1960s and 1970s that have been so badly sandblasted in use that they are almost totally opaque. This was because the operators forgot to put the hard glass filters on the front of the cameras.
Also binocular eyepieces that are terribly scratched in use.
It is modern coatings, which can be very hard, which prevent modern glass from rapid deterioration. Also the softer glasses are internal.

And as for metal, I have some light alloy Zeiss binoculars that have badly deteriorated.
And the 1940s 8 inch F/2.9 Pentac lenses have bodies that are very badly affected, crumbling away in your hands, because of the poor alloy that was used.

Nothing lasts for ever, although some things last quite a long time and some things don't.

Binastro said:

I think that I am a hybrid. I definitely want to live as a creature and not a machine. However, the youngsters around me seem to want to live as machines.
But I will adopt a modern machine if it fits in with my way of life. Also I will generally wait till the new machine has proved itself to be useful and reliable.

As to glass lasting forever, it seems that all glass corrodes, but at different rates. And some glasses scratch easily and some don't. For instance the Leitz Summar lenses scratch easily and can become almost opaque, where other lenses were much more durable.
I've seen aerial lenses from the 1960s and 1970s that have been so badly sandblasted in use that they are almost totally opaque. This was because the operators forgot to put the hard glass filters on the front of the cameras.
Also binocular eyepieces that are terribly scratched in use.
It is modern coatings, which can be very hard, which prevent modern glass from rapid deterioration. Also the softer glasses are internal.

And as for metal, I have some light alloy Zeiss binoculars that have badly deteriorated.
And the 1940s 8 inch F/2.9 Pentac lenses have bodies that are very badly affected, crumbling away in your hands, because of the poor alloy that was used.

Nothing lasts for ever, although some things last quite a long time and some things don't.

Click to expand...

Sadly, not all softer glasses are internal. In the navy and as a civilian, I repaired telescopic alidades that had rear eyelenses of the softest glass I had ever seen. If I worked on an alidade that was purchased more than a few weeks earlier, there was a high likelihood that the eyelens would have to be replaced. Considering the device had ~25 elements, one would have thought more PRACTICALLY about the design. But, what did I know? I was all about SAVING money!

Bill

On New Year's Eve I stopped the traffic on a busy road to pick up a robin which was hit by one of the cars in front - a couple more had passed right over it but somehow not flattened it. Apart from being stunned I couldn't detect any injury. My wife and I pulled into a side street and after a good ten minutes in my hand it suddenly came to with a screech so we got out of the car to let it go in a nearby garden. Then a little moment of magic - I opened my hand expecting it to fly away and instead it just perched on my finger, where it sat for a couple of minutes, looking around and even rearranged a few feathers. All of a sudden it took off - not before leaving me a little present - there's gratitude for you! It landed in a tree and had a thorough preen before it flew off. A great memory to take into the New Year and no binoculars involved - digital or otherwise.
If only I could convince critters that I mean them no harm I wouldn't need any optics.
Until that day I'm happy to try any device that allows a better view of their world. But I think I'll always keep a decent pair of bins as back up.

Phil

I'll make a point of avoiding sandstorms with my binoculars ;-)
They have a a pretty cushy life, though
some Wollensacks from the Merchant Marine and Navy look like they've
been through hell, scratches, drops, mold, dirt, salt, aluminum galling..

The glass on the middle-class Japanese binocs seems durable,
with the occaisional sleeve-burn on the EP coating.

Fujinon is relentlessly tough. Cleaning the salt, mold, dirt,
and gunk out of the Customs was amazing. It didn't seem
possible, but the coatings held other than a little on the EP.