The Easy View (1 Viewer)

[jring]

A 9, 5º 7x35 NL/SF/Noctivid
Yes, please. Take my money

Well, we didn't get the 7x35 Retrovid with the wide tfov... so I don't know about Leica... as for the Zeiss and Swaro, yeah, they seem to be interested in wide angle bins lately...

Joachim

 

[casscade]

Yeah the priority seems to be with 8’s, 10’s and 12’s these days. Not much has been done with 7’s in decades. Leica has basically the same fov and very similar design as the 90’s trinovids, same with the slc up until it was discontinued in place of the 8’s, even Zeiss doesn’t make an alpha 7 anymore. I would love a modern 7x in a Leica noctovid, a swaro el, slc, or nl, or a Zeiss sf, with a modern well corrected 470 to 500 ft fov.

 

[Maljunulo]

Yeah the priority seems to be with 8’s, 10’s and 12’s these days. Not much has been done with 7’s in decades. Leica has basically the same fov and very similar design as the 90’s trinovids, same with the slc up until it was discontinued in place of the 8’s, even Zeiss doesn’t make an alpha 7 anymore. I would love a modern 7x in a Leica noctovid, a swaro el, slc, or nl, or a Zeiss sf, with a modern well corrected 470 to 500 ft fov.

No one is going to design and build one unless they think it will sell.

Unless there is one still under wraps somewhere, it seems that none of the big three think that it would.

 

[casscade]

Yeah so it seems, I’m sure the 7’s would be the least popular among the masses, flat fields, power, the 12x is gaining a lot of ground lately, and fov seem to be the big selling points of today.

 

[Chosun Juan]

What binoculars (8x or 10x) have the most EASY and stress free view? Any opinions?

Have you given the Swarovski 10x50 SV a whirl yet .... ?



Chosun 🙅

 

[ZDHart]

I don't know... but I nominate the UVHD+ 7x42! Give them a go!

 

[Maljunulo]

The larger the exit pupil, the more poorly a glass can be adjusted or positioned with no ill effects.

Not sure if this is what OP means or not.

 

[james holdsworth]

The larger the exit pupil, the more poorly a glass can be adjusted or positioned with no ill effects.

Not sure if this is what OP means or not.

Don’t you mean “smaller”?

 

[Maljunulo]

I don't think so,because as long as your pupil is smaller than the exit pupil, it can wander around and not go outside the edges of the exit pupil.

Do I have it backwards?

 

[Stevenkelby]

I don't think so,because as long as your pupil is smaller than the exit pupil, it can wander around and not go outside the edges of the exit pupil.

Do I have it backwards?

You are correct sir. I believe that a large exit pupil allows for careless (easy) eye placement.

As to the thread title, I vote for my Swarovski Habicht 7x42 GA. The most comfortable and easy viewing binocular I've ever used.

 

[mtn]

Bringing this one back to life with a (hopefully) simple question:

If DOF is solely dependent on magnification, why do some binoculars seem to have more depth of field than others of the same power? My 8x Porros (Nikon EII for example) certainly seem to have a greater DOF than my 8x SP roofs (let's say my Swaro SLC HD).

And I will to add to that my thought as to why:
I have noticed, as recently as this evening while I was out birding (watching geese on the pond about 130 meters from my porch), that due to the "curved field" of some binoculars (this evening it was my Zeiss FL 7s), much of the peripheral foreground of my view (tonight it was grass in my pastures) will be in focus at the same time as the subject (water and geese on the pond) in the center of the field well beyond it... conservatively 100 meters of depth of field in focus at once (!), starting about 25 meters away. I tested this by moving the center of the field of view from the geese and water on the pond downward, onto the closer grasses that had been in focus, and they became noticeably out of focus, as if I were focused beyond them.

So wouldn't the amount field curvature also contribute to the perceived depth of field when viewing a scene with any kind of depth?

--

As for the easy view - my 7x42s with their wide field are certainly easy on my eyes. My SV 10x50s were also very relaxing when viewing something stationary, although I just couldn't get along with them while panning.

 

[[email protected]]

Bringing this one back to life with a (hopefully) simple question:

If DOF is solely dependent on magnification, why do some binoculars seem to have more depth of field than others of the same power? My 8x Porros (Nikon EII for example) certainly seem to have a greater DOF than my 8x SP roofs (let's say my Swaro SLC HD).

And I will to add to that my thought as to why:
I have noticed, as recently as this evening while I was out birding (watching geese on the pond about 130 meters from my porch), that due to the "curved field" of some binoculars (this evening it was my Zeiss FL 7s), much of the peripheral foreground of my view (tonight it was grass in my pastures) will be in focus at the same time as the subject (water and geese on the pond) in the center of the field well beyond it... conservatively 100 meters of depth of field in focus at once (!), starting about 25 meters away. I tested this by moving the center of the field of view from the geese and water on the pond downward, onto the closer grasses that had been in focus, and they became noticeably out of focus, as if I were focused beyond them.

So wouldn't the amount field curvature also contribute to the perceived depth of field when viewing a scene with any kind of depth?

--

As for the easy view - my 7x42s with their wide field are certainly easy on my eyes. My SV 10x50s were also very relaxing when viewing something stationary, although I just couldn't get along with them while panning.

I think you are confusing DOF with "3D". They are closely related but different. Your porros have greater "3D" than your roofs, and that is why they seem to have more DOF. With "3D" the images seem to pop out of the back round because they are in three dimensions, or they appear to have length, breadth, and depth., whereas, the roofs are "pie plate" flat in that every thing is in one dimension like on a pie plate. DOF just means you have to focus less for a given distance, and that is why it is solely dependent on magnification. With 7x you have to focus much less than with 10x for different distances. More field curvature will give a greater "3D" impression. Flat field binoculars like the NL and SF have less "3D" than a binocular with more field curvature like the Leica's. A 7x42 is easy on the eyes for several reasons. They have greater DOF, so your eyes can see greater depth in the image without focusing, you have have a bigger exit pupil, so eye placement is easy, and you can move your eye around more in the oculars and 7x is much steadier because of the lower magnification. You probably experienced rolling Ball with the SV 10x50 while panning. The SV can show rolling ball and many people are sensitive to it.

 

[Canip]

So wouldn't the amount field curvature also contribute to the perceived depth of field when viewing a scene with any kind of depth?

My answer:
Yes, very much so!

Canip

 

[Troubador]

My answer:
Yes, very much so!

Canip

And don't forget that with 7x magnification (and lower magnifications) the view suffers from significantly less 'telephoto compression'. If you look at photos taken with telephoto (long focal length lenses, = higher magnification) lenses, objects at different distances from the photographer seem crammed closer together than when imaged using shorter focal length lenses ie with lower magnification. The same effect is noticeable with binos. When I first got a pair of 7x42s and visited familiar coastal sites I was amazed to be able to perceive spaces between objects (e.g. islands and headlands) that for years (through 8x and 10x binos) had appeared to me to be so close together. This reduction in compression gives the scene a much improved feel of depth and realism.

Lee

 

[yarrellii]

This reduction in compression gives the scene a much improved feel of depth...

This is a really interesting subject and thread. And this point by Lee is specially enlightening. While I don't know what technical books about optic or physics say, I think it's interesting to note the following (speaking in layman terms, no aspiration of technical knowledge here):

- One thing is stereopsis. As Denco pointed earlier, and can be easily experienced, because Porro prism binoculars usually have their objectives spaced wider apart than roof binoculars, the stereopsis is greater, since the two images are more different, and when our brain combines them together, the effect is a more pronounced perception of depth.

- However, as Lee just remarked (again, it's usually easy to experience with low power binoculars, such as 6x or 7x), the reduction in compression gives the image an improved feeling of depth. So, what is depth? When we talk about "3-D effect" or "3-D view" we are talking about the difference between a flat view (where there are only 2 dimensions, height and width) and one were you have a perception of a third dimension, and that 3rd dimension is depth. Actually, all binoculars offer a 3D view, because we use both eyes, and they're separated by our IPD. What I think is remarkable is how some binoculars offer a more pronounced 3D effect. So, since low power binos have less compression of the image, it can be argued that a 7x offering more depth has an enhanced 3D effect, since depth is actually part of that 3D.

- Said that, oddly enough, some binoculars with theoretically low possibilities of offering a pronounced sense of depth, like the 8x20 Leica Ultravid, accomplish a remarkable effect, where coatings and lense design (like the field curvature that sparkled the original question by @mtn ) are the most likely culprits.

So, we have the pure design of the lenses, the coatings, the space between the objectives, magnification... what else?

 

[mtn]

I think you are confusing DOF with "3D". They are closely related but different. Your porros have greater "3D" than your roofs, and that is why they seem to have more DOF. With "3D" the images seem to pop out of the back round because they are in three dimensions, or they appear to have length, breadth, and depth., whereas, the roofs are "pie plate" flat in that every thing is in one dimension like on a pie plate. DOF just means you have to focus less for a given distance, and that is why it is solely dependent on magnification. With 7x you have to focus much less than with 10x for different distances. More field curvature will give a greater "3D" impression. Flat field binoculars like the NL and SF have less "3D" than a binocular with more field curvature like the Leica's. A 7x42 is easy on the eyes for several reasons. They have greater DOF, so your eyes can see greater depth in the image without focusing, you have have a bigger exit pupil, so eye placement is easy, and you can move your eye around more in the oculars and 7x is much steadier because of the lower magnification. You probably experienced rolling Ball with the SV 10x50 while panning. The SV can show rolling ball and many people are sensitive to it.

Maybe the fact that I had/have to focus much less with the 7s is what got me thinking along these lines... Clearly they have a significant depth to the field (the ~100 meters described in my previous post).
I take "3D" to describe more about how individual elements appear within a view (as influenced by the wide set objectives of most Porro designs) and depth of field to mean how much distance away from me is in focus at once... Maybe I didnt describe that clearly enough in my post above.

I will have to play around with what Lee is describing as "telephoto compression"...

 

[jafritten]

3D effect and 'telephoto compression' is also discussed in this thread:
Post in thread 'Discontinuous 3D effect' Discontinuous 3D effect

 

[henry link]

DOF, properly defined, is just the distance in front and behind a focused object where other closer or more distant objects AT THE SAME POINT in the field continue to be acceptably focused. It has nothing to do with stereopsis or any other "3D" effect, real or imagined. It can be as easily determined with one eye as with two.

Field curvature shifts the distance of a focused point as it moves from the center to edge of the field, but does not change the true DOF at any point along the way. You might compare it to a curved wall 2 meters thick. The ends of the wall may curve toward you in way that makes them 4 meters closer to you than the center of the wall, but that doesn't make the wall 4 meters thick.

Rather than trying to determine DOF by doing something both hard and subjective like detecting the exact distance at which focus is no longer acceptable I prefer to test DOF by comparing the sizes of the large circles of confusion seen about 3-4 meters from an artificial star through telescopes set at infinity focus. The size difference of the blur circles is obvious between telescopes with different DOFs and is unaffected by eyesight acuity, aberrations or field curvature.

 

[[email protected]]

And don't forget that with 7x magnification (and lower magnifications) the view suffers from significantly less 'telephoto compression'. If you look at photos taken with telephoto (long focal length lenses, = higher magnification) lenses, objects at different distances from the photographer seem crammed closer together than when imaged using shorter focal length lenses ie with lower magnification. The same effect is noticeable with binos. When I first got a pair of 7x42s and visited familiar coastal sites I was amazed to be able to perceive spaces between objects (e.g. islands and headlands) that for years (through 8x and 10x binos) had appeared to me to be so close together. This reduction in compression gives the scene a much improved feel of depth and realism.

Lee

Lee, very interesting. I have never heard about "telephoto compression." That is an fascinating concept and explains a lot about 7x versus 10x binocular. It makes total sense, though.

 

[[email protected]]

This is a really interesting subject and thread. And this point by Lee is specially enlightening. While I don't know what technical books about optic or physics say, I think it's interesting to note the following (speaking in layman terms, no aspiration of technical knowledge here):

- One thing is stereopsis. As Denco pointed earlier, and can be easily experienced, because Porro prism binoculars usually have their objectives spaced wider apart than roof binoculars, the stereopsis is greater, since the two images are more different, and when our brain combines them together, the effect is a more pronounced perception of depth.

- However, as Lee just remarked (again, it's usually easy to experience with low power binoculars, such as 6x or 7x), the reduction in compression gives the image an improved feeling of depth. So, what is depth? When we talk about "3-D effect" or "3-D view" we are talking about the difference between a flat view (where there are only 2 dimensions, height and width) and one were you have a perception of a third dimension, and that 3rd dimension is depth. Actually, all binoculars offer a 3D view, because we use both eyes, and they're separated by our IPD. What I think is remarkable is how some binoculars offer a more pronounced 3D effect. So, since low power binos have less compression of the image, it can be argued that a 7x offering more depth has an enhanced 3D effect, since depth is actually part of that 3D.

- Said that, oddly enough, some binoculars with theoretically low possibilities of offering a pronounced sense of depth, like the 8x20 Leica Ultravid, accomplish a remarkable effect, where coatings and lense design (like the field curvature that sparkled the original question by @mtn ) are the most likely culprits.

So, we have the pure design of the lenses, the coatings, the space between the objectives, magnification... what else?

Good post! Explains a lot, and you brought up a lot of good ideas. So maybe a 7x porro would have more "3D" than a 10x porro.