BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="brocknroller" data-source="post: 1603206" data-attributes="member: 665">I’m not an "optical pro” but I can tell you from personal experience that the SEs can take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’. They don’t go out of collimation easily. You have to really abuse them. However, the EII is more delicato than robusto. The lack of full rubber armoring like the SE (except for the bare metal near the center post), and the EII’s bare metal objective housings make them more vulnerable. I’m not sure if the two porros share the same prism seats, some BF member took them apart, but I can’t remember what he said about that. I’ll have to delve into the archives when I have more time. Prism seat design plays an important role in how well porro prisms stay in collimation. The inferior spring-loaded prism seats used in big Chinese bins are supremo fragile (pronounced FRA-GEE’-LEE like Darren McGavin in “A Christmas Story”).I had two 15x70 Chinese bins shipped to me, one checked and initialed by the owner of the company himself and the other collimated by the trusted individual seller, who knows how to collimate bins. Although both bins were packed well, merely getting bounced around in transit knocked both of bins out of collimation by the time they reached me, which in one case, was only one state away. These are not isolated cases, if you read astro-bin forums, you’ll find that it’s quite common. So much so, in fact, that one dealer of Chinese bins has a Website devoted to how to collimate the big Chinese bins he sells! But I suppose the good news is that with some patience and a collimation tool, you can get the bins back in collimation rather than sending them back to the manufacturer (I didn’t have the patience or the right tool, so I sent them back anyway).This experience turned me off to Chinese optics for quite awhile and to write an open letter on a forum calling for "Haute Chinese" bins. Only now are the Chinese finally becoming followers of W. E. Deming, the quality control guru, who couldn’t get the American company he worked for to listen to his ideas about quality control so he went over to Japan and helped the Japanese build an economic empire. Here’s a short biop on Deming: <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-21/news/mn-4178_1_quality-control" target="_blank">http://articles.latimes.com/1993-12-21/news/mn-4178_1_quality-control</a>A drop test to see which would stay in collimation longer, an 8x32 SE or an 8x32 Ultravid would be very interesting. To the person who said he owned both these bins, please try this test at home…....... and then ship me the remains of the 8x32 SE so I can send them to Nikon for $20 to be repaired or replaced. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" />Nikon has the best used bin repair policy in the entire bino world. That’s one reason why I’m a Nikon bin enthusiast.You can use them with impunity, though I’m still careful, because I don’t want to wait weeks to get them back if they need repairs, particularly now that my collection has thinned faster than customer line at IndyMac after being taken over by federal regulators.However, your point is well taken. Perhaps the fact that roofs can be made more “mangle proof” than porros because of their straight through prisms and internal focusers is another reason (besides mystique and money) that bin manufacturers chose to advance the roof model rather than your grandfather’s porros. To wit, I will revise the name of my theory to the “3 Ms of Roof Prism Development”: Mystique, Money, and Mangle-proofing, which would include waterproofing and fog proofing because water damage and internal fogging can “mangle” the insides of a bin. As Bob pointed out, roofs are harder to fix if something does go wrong since roof prism alignment needs to be more precise than porros, and the technicians also have to suck out the air of the exposed insides and inject nitrogen or argon for WP/FP. So you better have your Leica Passport Warranty handy if you do need to ship your Ultravid back after the drop test. Even though I read that Leica customer service reps recently took a course with Miss Manners, they are still going to charge you through the proboscis if you don’t have the warranty.However, since a premium roof is much less likely to go out of collimation and is less vulnerable to other susceptibilities of porros, if you take reasonable care of your roofs, they could last you a lifetime and even become an heirloom you could pass on to your grandchildren, who will promptly sell them on eGoogle (after Google buys out eBay) because by then, porro prism bins will be back in style. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" />BrockP.S. They already have the domain:<a href="http://www.aboutus.org/EGoogle.com" target="_blank">http://www.aboutus.org/EGoogle.com</a></blockquote>

Verification