Yarrelli
You had my sympathies from the word go!
I realised from your experiences and the experiences of Patudo that I had most fortunately struck lucky.
I can't answer your question. But I think I know where the answer can possibly be found: In threads on Bird Forum where posters describe what you see when you view through a binocular with the eyes in advance of, or in rear of, the point of eye relief.
In case though that more on the subject of customisation may help you, I draw upon my own experience of customising a minimal eye relief, wide angle binocular (the Opticron 8x32 SR.GA) to write further as follows.
I insert the comments of Binastro and Peter (wllmspd) above.
Please forgive any repetition.
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1. Binastro mentioned the resource of folding down or cutting off the eyecups
2. As a refinement, besides folding down the eyecups of the Opticron 8x32 SR.GA, I bulked out the top of the barrels over the eyecups with six thicknesses of bicycle inner tube (ie three sections doubled back)
The result was barrels of much the same diameter as the barrels of the Minolta with the eyecups folded down.
This may represent the correct fit of wide angle binoculars generally for my eye sockets
3. Peter posted:
'Got to say I’d love some 6-7mm exit pupil 7-8x binoculars with 80degree Apparent field of view... likely impossible to realise or to use (unless you don’t have a nose)'
The Minolta MK Standard 7x35 EWA 11* is a 7x binocular with a 5mm exit pupil and a 77 degree apparent field of view! And I have kept my 20mm wide at the bridge nose!!
4. As I've canvassed, the width of the nose and the inter-pupillary distance are unlikely to be the only relevant dimensions.
The name of the game may nevertheless still essentially be simple: to locate the surface of the eyeball at the point of eye relief above the surface of the ocular lens*.
It may be that in practice I compromise on achieving coincidence.
Thus I just experiment until I get a distance that gives me the full image of the field of view that I desire. Whether the distance does at the same time coincide with the point of eye relief or not, I am not in a position to measure.
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Much of what I say you may already have tried with the Minolta or other wide angle binoculars.
You have, I suspect, already done as I did with the Opticron:
* Turned the eyecups down
* Hovered the eyes over the surface of the ocular lens at different heights until you got the full field of view.
(Incidentally, I also got, as an unexpected bonus of turning the eyecups of the Opticron down, a much better image in the outer field. The image was no longer the poor image that some posters on the Forum have criticised).
As above, I then went on to bulk out the barrels so that in use my eyes were supported at the relevant height.
The Minolta will however have constituted a much more difficult proposition than my Opticron: Should your nose be substantially wider than mine, you will also have had to trim, rather than expand, the diameter of the barrels, which of course would not have been on.
So practically you will have been confined to cutting off or removing, rather than turning down, the eyecups.
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But for you, I suppose, hovering did not yield you a satisfactory image.
Or you couldn't, by cutting off or removing the eyecups, achieve a satisfactory fit.
Unless other posters can take the matter further on, I am sad to say that you may have to accept that, as to customising your Minolta, you have run out of resources.
Stephen
* You probably know from WJC's posts that it is not an available resource to adjust the position of the point of eye relief. The point of eye relief is a fixed point, and cannot be adjusted. But it's as well to stress the fact
). As you can imagine, if this happens, my right eye simply doesn't see anything and my left eye can see but a tiny crescent of light (see picture attached). I first noticed this in a classic ultra-wide field set of binoculars, and ever since I've realised it happens in almost every wide field binocular (EII, MK Standard, FL 7x42, Dialyt 7x42, etc), the only exception being the 7x33 9,3º Celestron Granite (these are the only S-P prism binoculars of the lot; I know it might sound stupid, but I wonder if this has anything to do).
