In the months since the announcement of the SF, from time to time people have wondered about the quality of its view compared with HT’s. I am one of those people with an interest in a holistic comparison of the views produced by the two optical systems (those interested in a specification comparison need to visit the Zeiss website) and for me the word ‘quality’ in this context doesn’t so much mean ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but the nature of the view, its essence or ‘flavour’, if you will.
One of the Bird Forum regulars memorably called this sort of consideration ‘voodoo optics’ but it has a basis in the optical systems the binoculars use. At the heart of the HT are Abbe-Koenig prisms which achieve their purpose by virtue of total internal reflection, while the Schmidt-Pechan prisms that drive SF utilise a dielectic reflective coating on one surface.
The question then, is whether the prisms endow both models with something that the other doesn’t possess.
Armed with this question in mind I have toured the local countryside in South Yorkshire (my home county) and North Derbyshire to the west, famous for its landscapes called the Dark Peak (peatland habitat) and White Peak (limestone habitat). I took with me 8x42 HTs and SFs and glassed a series of rural, suburban and urban landscapes to compare and contrast the two models.
I had done something similar with the FL 8x42 and HT a couple of years ago and soon discovered that HT markedly improved on the FL’s reproduction of reds and associated tones, without having an over-Photoshopped look of artificially enhanced colour. In fact the HT has a stunning ability with regard to the separation of colour tones. A wild Scottish hillside above the sea in autumn has an enormous number of tones of reds, gingers and browns on the hill and below it a zone of yellow-orange lichen, with a range of brown sea-weeds in the sea. The HT easily separates all of these ‘brown’ tones and allows me to more easily spot brown Otters amongst the brown sea-weed.
Back to places near my home town, the first and most obvious conclusion, is that both have the ‘Zeiss view’, regarded as neutral and realistic by some and on the cold side by others. I put this down to the T* coatings and the efforts of Nicholas Benoit in Wetzlar, whose job it is to continually update them.
However after swapping between them time and time again, a subtle but constant and reliable difference did begin to emerge. The problem is, can I describe it accurately?
Trying to use as few words as possible: HT has a subtle mellowness to its colour palette that, as I have described above, still allows it to easily separate closely-related colour tones. SF, on the other hand, has a subtle liveliness to its colours without being the slightest bit harsh. To be absolutely clear about this, I am not describing HT as lacking clarity, its more about how the clarity is delivered. HT is a little more relaxed and SF a little more excitable. I fear I am drifting into ‘wine-tasting-speak’ here but actually that’s not inappropriate when the question set in paragraph one referred to a possible difference in ‘flavour’ between the two models.
If I can be allowed another analogy I might say that the HT has a hint of a clear autumn day to its view, and SF a hint of a clear spring one.
As usual, which you prefer, is up to you.
Lee
One of the Bird Forum regulars memorably called this sort of consideration ‘voodoo optics’ but it has a basis in the optical systems the binoculars use. At the heart of the HT are Abbe-Koenig prisms which achieve their purpose by virtue of total internal reflection, while the Schmidt-Pechan prisms that drive SF utilise a dielectic reflective coating on one surface.
The question then, is whether the prisms endow both models with something that the other doesn’t possess.
Armed with this question in mind I have toured the local countryside in South Yorkshire (my home county) and North Derbyshire to the west, famous for its landscapes called the Dark Peak (peatland habitat) and White Peak (limestone habitat). I took with me 8x42 HTs and SFs and glassed a series of rural, suburban and urban landscapes to compare and contrast the two models.
I had done something similar with the FL 8x42 and HT a couple of years ago and soon discovered that HT markedly improved on the FL’s reproduction of reds and associated tones, without having an over-Photoshopped look of artificially enhanced colour. In fact the HT has a stunning ability with regard to the separation of colour tones. A wild Scottish hillside above the sea in autumn has an enormous number of tones of reds, gingers and browns on the hill and below it a zone of yellow-orange lichen, with a range of brown sea-weeds in the sea. The HT easily separates all of these ‘brown’ tones and allows me to more easily spot brown Otters amongst the brown sea-weed.
Back to places near my home town, the first and most obvious conclusion, is that both have the ‘Zeiss view’, regarded as neutral and realistic by some and on the cold side by others. I put this down to the T* coatings and the efforts of Nicholas Benoit in Wetzlar, whose job it is to continually update them.
However after swapping between them time and time again, a subtle but constant and reliable difference did begin to emerge. The problem is, can I describe it accurately?
Trying to use as few words as possible: HT has a subtle mellowness to its colour palette that, as I have described above, still allows it to easily separate closely-related colour tones. SF, on the other hand, has a subtle liveliness to its colours without being the slightest bit harsh. To be absolutely clear about this, I am not describing HT as lacking clarity, its more about how the clarity is delivered. HT is a little more relaxed and SF a little more excitable. I fear I am drifting into ‘wine-tasting-speak’ here but actually that’s not inappropriate when the question set in paragraph one referred to a possible difference in ‘flavour’ between the two models.
If I can be allowed another analogy I might say that the HT has a hint of a clear autumn day to its view, and SF a hint of a clear spring one.
As usual, which you prefer, is up to you.
Lee
