I've never noticed it in the 8x32 SE, but I've always found the "Nippon Ring" easy to see (even during, what is for me, normal viewing use) in my Nikon 10x42 Venturer LX/HG bins. Rolling ball is also easy to experience with those.
--AP
I don't see it in the 8x32 SE either, I just checked to make sure, and I can't remember if I checked for it in the 050xxx 10x SE I had. That was a very nice sample (excuse me while I bend over and kick myself for selling it during the Great Panic of 2013 :'D).
But the ring was there in Steve's sample, even he saw it, but he didn't let me know because he wanted to see if I would notice it without prompting. For an immunie like Steve to see it, who is rarely bothered let alone notices the flaws/aberrations that I do in bins, you know it had to be fairly obvious.
Yes, Nippon Ring in the Venturer LX, and so much RB that even the sky's night canopy seemed to curve. If the LX is at one end of the distortion spectrum with very little pincushion, the ZR 7x36 ED2 is on the other, with gobs of pincushion. In both extreme, I see the image roll - rolling ball with the LX, rolling BOWL with the ED2. Some people don't see the rolling image in the ED2, so apparently there are also pincushion immunies.
In Holger's Hierarchy of Distortion, the bin that best fits my ideal is the Swaro 10x42 SLC-HD, which falls in the middle of the moderate distortion window (btwn k= 0.5 and k= 0.7). Not sure where the SEs rank by comparison. I would imagine they are lower than the 10x SLC-HD but higher than the full sized LXs.
What's interesting is that optics companies have been making binoculars for over a 100 years, you'd think by now they would have found an ideal or at least a limited range that works best for most people in terms of smooth panning, and then stick with those values. But as Holger's chart shows, even bins made by the same company and in the same series vary in terms of their distortion level.
And from what Pier said about his 8.5x SV ELs, even the same model can vary in its distortion enough to the point where one shows RB and one doesn't (or at least, I think that's what he meant). However, that could be from Swaro tweaking the model's distortion in later production runs rather than sample variation.
I was also surprised by Pier's comments about variation in color bias in two different 8.5x SV EL samples. Perhaps Swaro is also messing with the coatings from batch to batch. The original EL had a slight yellow bias, a nod to Swaro's earlier yellow tint to cut through the din of European winters for hunters.
Given how people's eyes/perceptions vary, I guess it's a good thing that there are bins available with various levels of distortion to match the preferences of different folks, but it's too bad that certain models I like such as the full sized LX, the 10x42 in particular, weren't available in different distortion levels. Perhaps when the Digital Revolution comes to optics, distortion levels might be be adjustable to accommodate the user.
Brock
