Serial number is 1949 manufacture and I agree it looks multi-coated but Zeiss Jena was not making multi-coated binos that early. The IF Dekaris marking on a CF bino makes no sense either. 1/6000 references the graticule graduations but on all German binos I've seen it's usually 1/6400. Other than the markings, though, it looks like a late 1970's -early 1990's CZJ Dekaris. The non factory markings are unusual too. A fake of some sort but an intriguing one.
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Vintage Binoculars (4 Viewers)
- Thread starter LPT
- Start date
jan van daalen
Well-known member
Don't forget that not so many WWII binoculars are original.
After WWII the undamaged Leitz factory was forced by the Allies to service and repair all military optics. Because of lack on spare parts often cannibalism (of optics) took place. Function before looks!!
Jan
After WWII the undamaged Leitz factory was forced by the Allies to service and repair all military optics. Because of lack on spare parts often cannibalism (of optics) took place. Function before looks!!
Jan
Thank you for this very interesting and largely unknown tidbit of binocular history.
So some apparent 'fakes' may in fact be authentic items that got a makeover during a chaotic period.
jan van daalen
Well-known member
If you read "The Univex Story", written by Miss Repinsky in 1991, you'll find out that during WWII the Farrand Optical Co. Philidelphia, was one of the most outstanding optical facilities in the world, equal to German made optics and considered second to none in precision and quality.
From July 1945 'till November 1948, Leitz technician renovated/modified on a daily base more than 200 binoculars in two shifts of 5 man, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Those technicians got their hands on every brand emagineable and sources from these times recorded that US optics, in their experience, were third graded at best. Who to believe?
We can say for a fact that Germans are bad loosers
Anyhow, we can say for sure that WWII optics are not by definition genuine.
Jan
Farrand indeed made some amazing lenses, world class.
The Mercury camera is great fun.
Also Baker, maybe after WW2 designed and produced lenses still unmatched. Up to more than 30 inch clear aperture.
TTH, Cooke and Ross were quite able to make the best.
The French made lenses that were world leaders.
The Czechs were world class, so were the Russians.
Japanese also, the best and the bad.
Finland optics world class.
They were also in many cases able to make rubbish.
Zeiss could make the best, But have you seen 1950s Voigtlaender lenses. Some of them are now awful.
Schneider first class.
Leitz Very good and very bad.
P.S.
Dutch, Belgian, Swiss, Canadian firms produced world class optics.
One of best lenses I tested was designed by an Argentinian.
Liechtenstein world leaders in multicoating.
The Mercury camera is great fun.
Also Baker, maybe after WW2 designed and produced lenses still unmatched. Up to more than 30 inch clear aperture.
TTH, Cooke and Ross were quite able to make the best.
The French made lenses that were world leaders.
The Czechs were world class, so were the Russians.
Japanese also, the best and the bad.
Finland optics world class.
They were also in many cases able to make rubbish.
Zeiss could make the best, But have you seen 1950s Voigtlaender lenses. Some of them are now awful.
Schneider first class.
Leitz Very good and very bad.
P.S.
Dutch, Belgian, Swiss, Canadian firms produced world class optics.
One of best lenses I tested was designed by an Argentinian.
Liechtenstein world leaders in multicoating.
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jan van daalen
Well-known member
Out of curiosity (because I'm Dutch)
Which Dutch companies produce(d) world class optics?
Jan
Gijs van Ginkel
Well-known member
Jan,
Do you really not know that??
Gijs
Do you really not know that??
Gijs
Den Oude Delft.
I hope correct spelling.
Military and other high end, very high end, optics.
A 14 cm aperture Maksutov or similar I looked through was unbelievably good for a photo lens, military.
Also 150mm f/0.75 Rayxar etc.
I don't know if they are still called that.
Bouwers designer. (Spelling).
I hope correct spelling.
Military and other high end, very high end, optics.
A 14 cm aperture Maksutov or similar I looked through was unbelievably good for a photo lens, military.
Also 150mm f/0.75 Rayxar etc.
I don't know if they are still called that.
Bouwers designer. (Spelling).
I thought fastest refractive lens possible was f/0.57.
Maybe not.
Carl Zeiss Super Q Gigantar 40mm f/0.33.
$85,000.
GOI CV 20mm f/0.5 mirror lens Russian.
Signal Corps Engineering 30mm f/0/6.
Zeiss 50mm f/0.7
Stanley Kubrick and NASA.
The Rayxars are thorium glass.
Also Huge TTH
And U.S. 14 inch f/0.75 mounted on a truck. 350lbs?
Some of the Rayxars have been used on digital cameras with short back focus.
Zoomar 180mm f/1.3 worked well on my Minolta film camera. At f/1.3, although strictly a half frame lens.
There is also 240mm f/1.2 Medium format.
Zunow 50mm f/1.1 a bit soft.
Canon 50mm f/0.95 soft.
Maybe not.
Carl Zeiss Super Q Gigantar 40mm f/0.33.
$85,000.
GOI CV 20mm f/0.5 mirror lens Russian.
Signal Corps Engineering 30mm f/0/6.
Zeiss 50mm f/0.7
Stanley Kubrick and NASA.
The Rayxars are thorium glass.
Also Huge TTH
And U.S. 14 inch f/0.75 mounted on a truck. 350lbs?
Some of the Rayxars have been used on digital cameras with short back focus.
Zoomar 180mm f/1.3 worked well on my Minolta film camera. At f/1.3, although strictly a half frame lens.
There is also 240mm f/1.2 Medium format.
Zunow 50mm f/1.1 a bit soft.
Canon 50mm f/0.95 soft.
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jan van daalen
Well-known member
In 1939, the Admiralty Research Laboratory tested the Barr&Stroud CF15 7x50 (1931) and the Ross Stepnite 7x50 (1939) against the Zeiss Binoctar 7x50. The assignement came from the Commander in Chief Home Fleet, because they wanted the assurance that British optics were up to German optics as the beginning of the WWII was obvious.
Findings in the endreport were that: ".....it is most unfortunate that the CF15 was ever accepted for Service as its defects are obvious.....", meaning that the lenses came loose from the glue and that the glue was brought on in such a amount that the produced image was brown coloured.
The Stepnite was specially built by Ross for this test with high end glass, but its cost was so high that (once the Navy order would come in) the production models would be provided with inferior glass.
The findings of the Laboratory ended with: ".....the Zeiss instruments are optically superior....".
In 1991 a photo was published of Prince Charles, standing on the bridge of a Naval Vessel with the CF15 round his neck. 75000 were produced during WWII.
Jan
The Williamson F52 was fairly simple in comparison to the Busch/Zeiss survey camera.
The 36 inch f/6.3 Dallmeyer was inferior to the 75cm f/6.3 Zeiss Telikon.l
Yet the Zeiss camera weighed 3x as much and affected the performance of the carrying aircraft..
I had both cameras and boy is the Zeiss heavy and huge.
The photos produced by the Williamson F52 and F24 ran into millions and they were very reliable.
The T34 tank was simple and worked. The Tiger complex and slower production.
Which camera and tank proved more useful.
I also don't think much of the Barr and Stroud, but I suppose it worked.
Also why discuss lenses here.
Well top lenses are much more difficult to make.
They run from $10,000 to $1m plus, some $10m.
Top binoculars $3,000 to $20,000 for Fuji and Wild.
And the binocular lines often depend on larger lens operations.
The 36 inch f/6.3 Dallmeyer was inferior to the 75cm f/6.3 Zeiss Telikon.l
Yet the Zeiss camera weighed 3x as much and affected the performance of the carrying aircraft..
I had both cameras and boy is the Zeiss heavy and huge.
The photos produced by the Williamson F52 and F24 ran into millions and they were very reliable.
The T34 tank was simple and worked. The Tiger complex and slower production.
Which camera and tank proved more useful.
I also don't think much of the Barr and Stroud, but I suppose it worked.
Also why discuss lenses here.
Well top lenses are much more difficult to make.
They run from $10,000 to $1m plus, some $10m.
Top binoculars $3,000 to $20,000 for Fuji and Wild.
And the binocular lines often depend on larger lens operations.
jan van daalen
Well-known member
I couldn't resist:-O
British government decisions amaze me.
We handed over the supersonic Miles M52 1000 mph aircraft to the U.S.A. for nothing in return.
They copied it, produced the Bell X1, which went supersonic.
Winkle Brown, who just died, regretted not being the first supersonic pilot, although the Swallow probably was supersonic as it broke up.
We gave Stalin 3 Rolls Royce jet engines to his amazement. They made the Mig 15, which then shot down the British aircraft.
And the Canadian government scrapped the Avro Arrow, the world's best aircraft and best engine.
It never ceases to amaze me what idiots rule us.
P.S.
The reason why Britain has done O.K. is because other countries are often run by even bigger idiots than the ones we have.
We handed over the supersonic Miles M52 1000 mph aircraft to the U.S.A. for nothing in return.
They copied it, produced the Bell X1, which went supersonic.
Winkle Brown, who just died, regretted not being the first supersonic pilot, although the Swallow probably was supersonic as it broke up.
We gave Stalin 3 Rolls Royce jet engines to his amazement. They made the Mig 15, which then shot down the British aircraft.
And the Canadian government scrapped the Avro Arrow, the world's best aircraft and best engine.
It never ceases to amaze me what idiots rule us.
P.S.
The reason why Britain has done O.K. is because other countries are often run by even bigger idiots than the ones we have.
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I don't think the above is an entirely accurate description of the 1938 (not 1939 trials). According to William Reid's book, "'We're certainly not afraid of Zeiss' Barr & Stroud Binoculars and the Royal Navy", National Museums of Scotland 1988, pages 98-100:
The quality and the quantity of the binoculars available to the Royal Navy...were still causing concern at the Admiralty and elsewhere. A further cycle of tests was launched. This time they were called for by the C-and C Home Fleet who insisted in 1938 that the optical qualities of the Ziess Binoctar were dangerously superior to those of the equivalent British glass then being supplied the Senior Service. ... His opinions were confirmed to some extent during preliminary discussions between the officials at the National Physical Laboratory and the Admiralty Research Laboratory. As a result it was decided to compare an eleven year old Zeiss Binoctar with a Ross Stepnite bought in 1932..., a Barr & Stroud CF 15 of 1931..., and one of the Navy's current night binoculars, a Barr & Stroud CF41/AP1900A... . The ARL also bought a new Binoctar specifically for the tests and borrowed nine more Stepnites from the War Office; part of a recent delivery from the Ross works in London.
As the testers were aware that they had examined only a trifling sample, their report is hedged about with qualifications. They certainly did not flatter either of the Barr & Stroud patterns, but it is incredible that the obsolete CF15, and an early example of the model at that, was ever considered for inclusion in the trial. By then its successor, the CF30/AP1900 had been used aboard ship for some years, as indeed, had several hundreds of the more recently introduced CF40/AP1900A and the superior CF41/AP1900A. Teddington handed down a judgement of the obsolete CF15 that could hardly have been more damning or of less relevance. ... Yet for night observation the laboratory considered the British instruments with the field lens and the prisms cemented together were marginally better than their traditional German rival. For use in daylight the modern Zeiss was the Royal Navy's choice, being, 'definitely superior in optical quality to its predecessor'.
Although the report does state that "the defects [of the CF15] are obvious" (Reid page 99) there is no reference I can find that this was because "the lenses came loose from the glue" and that the glue produced a brown coloured image. However, Barr & Stroud naval binoculars had separation problems with their Porro II prisms which were cemented with Canada balsam (Reid pages 70-71, 116-117) but there is no mention of this occurring with objective or eye lenses.
Seeger's grey book page 304 shows a 1991 picture of Prince Charles with what appears to be a Barr & Stroud CF41 (could also be a CF42 - looks the same) but definitely not a CF15. Seeger identifies it as a CF41.
During WW II the Royal Canadian Navy's two principal binoculars were the Bausch & Lomb style REL 7x50 and a lesser number of the Barr & Stroud CF41 7x50. Although the RCN found the CF41's to be fragile (due to prism separation), heavy and somewhat ungainly to hold, they were allocated to capital ships and mandated for use by AA lookouts over the REL's because of their internally adjustable filter system which allowed the user to quickly and easily switch filters by turning a knob on each barrel when scanning toward the sun, seachlights, flares, or glare on the water. Although collectors today may overlook these filters, during wartime they were of inestimable value giving the CF41 an advantage over handheld naval binoculars made by other countries none of which had them.
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Thank you very much LPT for that information.
My understanding of coloured or grey images is that during WW2 high quality German glass was not available, and the best local Scottish sand was used, which produced glass with impurities in the volumes needed. The same I think happened to Ross, who I think made some of their own glass.
Wetzlar sand is just very good for optics.
The Dallmeyer 36inch f/6.3s of which I tested about twenty varied widely in quality, being made in 1940, 1941 and maybe 1942. I spent a week going through company logbooks. They had a heavy life, but also were intrinsically poor and made in haste.
They all had spherical aberration unless stopped to f/8.7. But they were mostly used at about f/11 often with yellow or red filters on B and W film 7x 8.5 inch approx and driven by very sharp needles as opposed to the enormous Zeiss camers with pressure or vacuum back. The U.S. 9x9 inch film also I think used air pressure to hold the film flat. The WW2 Dallmeyer Pentac 8inch f/2.9 lenses were even worse and only one in twenty was any good about 1980.
However, despite all this the lenses did a very good job.
TTH 48inch lenses well after WW2 were found to give up to 8x better resolution when all the elements were given optimum separations.
Replacement hand aspheric lenses ran to about £1m in today's money. So in many cases the old refurbished TTHs were used.
The British had to more or less panic produce optics as it was left far to late to make them.
Binoculars were borrowed from civilians to fill the gap,
Even recently one sees U.K tank officers using their own personal binoculars in preference to the supplied ones.
P.S.
The 3 or 4 75cm f/6.3 Zeiss Telikon that I tested were extremely well made to very high accuracy, which their original survey use required.
The Wray 5? element 36 inch f/4 lens had very poor resolution. But as a night lens it was good enough.
Don't put your hand through the shutter opening as you may lose it if the shutter fires.
The Wray 36 inch f/6.3 is only average.
The later Wynne designed Wray 12, 24 and 36 inch lenses are very good indeed.
My understanding of coloured or grey images is that during WW2 high quality German glass was not available, and the best local Scottish sand was used, which produced glass with impurities in the volumes needed. The same I think happened to Ross, who I think made some of their own glass.
Wetzlar sand is just very good for optics.
The Dallmeyer 36inch f/6.3s of which I tested about twenty varied widely in quality, being made in 1940, 1941 and maybe 1942. I spent a week going through company logbooks. They had a heavy life, but also were intrinsically poor and made in haste.
They all had spherical aberration unless stopped to f/8.7. But they were mostly used at about f/11 often with yellow or red filters on B and W film 7x 8.5 inch approx and driven by very sharp needles as opposed to the enormous Zeiss camers with pressure or vacuum back. The U.S. 9x9 inch film also I think used air pressure to hold the film flat. The WW2 Dallmeyer Pentac 8inch f/2.9 lenses were even worse and only one in twenty was any good about 1980.
However, despite all this the lenses did a very good job.
TTH 48inch lenses well after WW2 were found to give up to 8x better resolution when all the elements were given optimum separations.
Replacement hand aspheric lenses ran to about £1m in today's money. So in many cases the old refurbished TTHs were used.
The British had to more or less panic produce optics as it was left far to late to make them.
Binoculars were borrowed from civilians to fill the gap,
Even recently one sees U.K tank officers using their own personal binoculars in preference to the supplied ones.
P.S.
The 3 or 4 75cm f/6.3 Zeiss Telikon that I tested were extremely well made to very high accuracy, which their original survey use required.
The Wray 5? element 36 inch f/4 lens had very poor resolution. But as a night lens it was good enough.
Don't put your hand through the shutter opening as you may lose it if the shutter fires.
The Wray 36 inch f/6.3 is only average.
The later Wynne designed Wray 12, 24 and 36 inch lenses are very good indeed.
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Rathaus
Well-known member
And now I see the 'conservatives' are hammering you with a sugar tax. Everything appears to be taxed and regulated to unimaginable levels. I know it's not to continental European levels, but it is still astonishing for new world folk to comprehend.
I had a realisation recently - if British 'conservatives' brought their brutal taxation framework to Australia, there would be riots in the street from every side of politics...even the far left lol.
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mfunnell
Registered Confuser
I wouldn't be crowing too loudly. Looking at the dip-sticks currently squabbling over who is pretending to run our country versus who wants to pretend to run it, well, it isn't an edifying fight. And in Australia, in particular, there always seems to be someone wanting to ban something or tax it out of existence and plenty prepared to go along with that - especially if a [union|property-developer] (depending on "side" of politics) gets an unearned buck or two in the process.
Me, I'd try to watch the riots from a distance - with binoculars, whether vintage or not. Things seems less messy that way.
...Mike
Rathaus
Well-known member
Australia has about the third lowest 'total tax burden' in the OECD. I wouldn't sweat it or worry so much about the 'dipsticks'...they come and go..they always have done...you could put a monkey in charge...things move along regardless. If you're not a happy Chappy here, then you haven't really got much room to manoeuvre. There aren't many first world options if the tax here is too much of a burden for you. The US is one. Mexico.
I'm a bit weird - I love paying tax
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