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Repost of Stephen Ingraham's Truth about Optics (1 Viewer)

T

Tvc15_2000

Well-known member
While searching for these great articles I could not locate any links to them and am posting them again in PDF format.

The author is Stephen Ingraham. These posts are from 2006

Many thanks to Stephen for this great information
http://www.betterviewdesired.com/Stephen-Ingraham.php

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>> Late addition note: << The article is biased towards Zeiss since they funded the author at that time.
In my case its easy for me to filter that part of the artilce out and still enjoy the optics part.

I enjoyed the photos of the prisms etc. Your view may vary. I just enjoy learning about optics and wanted to share.
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I think Steve Ingraham's Better View Desired was one of the best online sources available. The resource has now been picked up by Christopher's Ltd. and still contains many of Steve's articles.
 
I have read this before but not for a long time. Great article. Very informative.
For me the biggest message in it is about colour fringing:

"Do yourself a favor. If you don’t see it, don’t teach yourself to. You will regret it."

If you can't see it you are very lucky. If you can see it, you can spend fortunes trying to get rid of it.

I didn't see it for years and knew I was lucky. But I discovered it by accident looking at tree tops early in the morning. it was really pronounced at that time. It wasn't a case of teaching myself to see it. I couldn't miss it.
I have better bins now (i.e. much more expensive) but I still can't resist testing them for fringing even though I know I shouldn't.
I read a lot of the optics posts on here and I deliberately avoid understanding some of the technical points because they sound to me like the same situation as colour fringing. I don't want to see them!

It seems to me that many posters on here have spent a fortune in the quest for the ultimate optics. I am trying not to go down the same route.

I wonder if it's possible to teach yourself to stop seing colour fringing?
Ignorance can be bliss!
Martin.
 
Tvc15_2000 said:
[Quoting Stephen Ingraham] Undoubtedly, just as multi-coating became a standard, and then Phase coating spread to cover the majority of roof prisms, dielectric mirror coatings for Schmidt Pechan prisms will proliferate, and will work their way down into less and less expensive binoculars over the next 5 years.
Remember though, that just as there are more and less efficient multi-coatings, and less and more efficient phase coatings, there will be, for some time to come, real differences in what manufacturers are calling dielectic mirror coatings. The key, as I understand it, is the number of segments the spectrum is broken down into, and the resulting number and tuning of the individual layers of coating. Not all dielectric mirrors are created equal nor will they be anytime soon. Performance will vary between manufacturers.
Click to expand...

Prophetic, and suggestive.
 
chris lewis said:
Ummm... there does appear to be some bias towards a certain German binocular maker. Chris
Click to expand...

I believe this dates from when he moved from being a consultant for Nikon to being one for Zeiss, and stopped doing BVD (which was later purchased by Astronomics/Christophers). BVD is stil there, but nothing really new for awhile.

In one of the sections, he refers to Zeiss bino's as "ours". ;)

BTW: No offense meant to Zeiss fans. I am a Zeiss user.o:) (and a Nikon user et al for that matter.......)


I do not think of it as ad copy, but it must be weighed for what it is.
 
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Without going line item by line item, or discounting anything specific Ingraham has written, I'll just say take anything coming from him with several grains of salt. He gets some things right, some wrong.

He has a checkered past of contradiction, confusion, and incorrect statements at Better View Desired. He is also a gun for hire. Once for Nikon, now for Zeiss.
 
I would agree with Jay's comments. Some of that info seems to be from Betterviewdesires and some from the Zeiss birding site...zbirding. I believe Steve continued to be the primary contributor for BVD through 2002-2003. He was reportedly instrumental in the design of the FLs and they were introduced in 2004. Those posts are dated 2006 so one could safely assume it was when he was working for Zeiss.

If I remember correctly he also had a nice little forum here on the BF where he contributed regular tips and info. I wonder what happened to that?

For what it is worth I think Steve called it like he saw it. There was an obvious bias for Nikon early and for Zeiss now. It doesn't affect his credibility in my eyes. Both of the glasses he prefers are considered some of the best currently available. I cannot say that there was much I personally disagreed with in his postings.
 
FrankD said:
If I remember correctly he also had a nice little forum here on the BF where he contributed regular tips and info. I wonder what happened to that?.
Click to expand...

I remember it also. It had “sticky” status for all or most of its short existence. Like the stuff posted here it displayed obvious Zeiss bias (I remember complaining about this) & was dropped after a while, perhaps for that reason.
 
FrankD said:
I would agree with Jay's comments. Some of that info seems to be from Betterviewdesires and some from the Zeiss birding site...zbirding. I believe Steve continued to be the primary contributor for BVD through 2002-2003. He was reportedly instrumental in the design of the FLs and they were introduced in 2004. Those posts are dated 2006 so one could safely assume it was when he was working for Zeiss.

If I remember correctly he also had a nice little forum here on the BF where he contributed regular tips and info. I wonder what happened to that?

For what it is worth I think Steve called it like he saw it. There was an obvious bias for Nikon early and for Zeiss now. It doesn't affect his credibility in my eyes. Both of the glasses he prefers are considered some of the best currently available. I cannot say that there was much I personally disagreed with in his postings.
Click to expand...

If he was shilling a little bit, he was shilling for some of the best glass available. I think his reviews on BVD were fair, and they nudged manufacturers toward what birders were interested in with respect to their products. Certainly Zeiss was floundering before he started consulting with them on how to build a birding glass, and I think by righting the Zeiss canoe he did birders everywhere a favor.
 
fugl said:
Sure does. Great articles? More like Zeiss infomercials! Doesn't BF have a policy about the posting of advertising copy?
Click to expand...

I think you will find that he was asked by BF to provide some articles, as Zeiss were one of the first sponsors of BF well before it became the massive resource that it is today.
 
mak said:
I think you will find that he was asked by BF to provide some articles, as Zeiss were one of the first sponsors of BF well before it became the massive resource that it is today.
Click to expand...

Perhaps, so, but the articles are still Zeiss infomercials & IMO, if “published” by BF at all , should have been labeled as such (or better yet the references to Zeiss should have been edited out). I posted to this effect at the time but the moderators for reasons known only to themselves saw fit to delete my (very restrained & polite) comments within a few hours of submission.

As far as the value of Ingraham’s BVD articles in general are concerned I think my views are closer to post #9 than to #11.
 
Sorry, but I have some difficulty calling a BVD recommendation as reference standards for Leica and Nikon binoculars, or giving Swift a recommendation of special merit as having much weight as Zeiss infomercials. While there was some of that, and while I maybe did not agree with him always, I thought he called it pretty much as he saw it, and there was always something to be gleaned from what he reviewed.

Once he started work for Zeiss, I think there is/was some expectation that he promote the product.
 
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My favorite part is about Glass Fiber Reinforced Polyamide, which is so good that automobile bumpers are made of it. Last time I checked, none of those bumpers could withstand an impact of more than about 2 mph.
 
Steve C said:
Sorry, but I have some difficulty calling a BVD recommendation as reference standards for Leica and Nikon binoculars, or giving Swift a recommendation of special merit as having much weight as Zeiss infomercials. While there was some of that, and while I maybe did not agree with him always, I thought he called it pretty much as he saw it, and there was always something to be gleaned from what he reviewed.

Once he started work for Zeiss, I think there is/was some expectation that he promote the product.
Click to expand...

As the wording of my posting makes clear enough, my reference to “infomercials” specifically concerned the articles published on BF, not the earlier stuff. As far as Ingraham’s being “expected” to promote the products of his employer, of course he was, that’s what he was being paid for. My objection was not to him doing his job, but to BF for presenting his views as unbiased when they weren’t.

I’m not impugning anyone’s integrity, by the way; it would be unreasonable to expect any employee to treat his employer’s products completely objectively vis-à-vis the competition in a public forum
 
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