The Zeiss Conquest HD 8x32 is a good choice, especially when you can get them for $600 new now. They have to be the best bargain around. I used to think the Nikon MHG 8x42 was the best bang for the buck, but the Zeiss is a little sharper on-axis and $400 cheaper.
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Why are Zeiss so sharp on-axis compared to other binoculars? (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Dennis Mau
- Start date
This is precisely what snapped me out of the audiophile rabbit hole. I realized everyone reviewing the equipment was an old ear with diminished hearing. They would throw up a chart to try to legitimize their opinion but that chart had little to do with what you would actually hear and the rest was them passing their subjective opinion off as fact.I recently had a debate with a colleague.
I said that since we all are going through a process called „aging“ (I think), with a predictable effect on the sharpness of our eyes, we ought to buy cheaper and cheaper binoculars over time, everything else is utter waste. Therefore the advice to younger forum members should be „buy the best binoculars you can afford while you are young“.
He disagreed. His point: since our eyes are deteriorationg over time, we ought to buy better and better (likely more expensive) binoculars -as we do with stronger and stronger glasses - to compensate the loss of sharpness in our eyes.
I found that a ridiculous argument. Any comments?
At least in the binocular world you have established, legitimate companies selling quality equipment. The barrier for entry is big enough that you don't have snake oil salesmen selling "magic glass" for $50,000 like you have audiophiles selling "magic cables".
Like hearing, vision deteriorates with age but I think there is a lot more variance in vision than in hearing. There are definitely older people who have better vision than I do. Just sharing and switching binoculars between people has shown me there is a huge range of visual acuity and eye shape to account to how one wears a binocular and what one sees.
Unlike audiophile equipment it is quite trivial for most of us to go down to a store and compare binoculars side by side. I do spot some pseudoscience and myths in the binocular community but it is quite tame compared to the audiophile world. There is a lot of "my opinion is fact" but that is true everywhere. At least there is nobody selling crystals that promise to stabilize your binoculars... yet.
PeterPS
Well-Known Member
Your friend would clearly win the debate if he added to his argument the fact that usually when your eyesight is excellent your budget is low, and vice-versa. How many young birders carry Swaro , Zeiss or Leica? I would guess that very few: they cannot afford them and also they don't really need them as their vision is so good that the minor imperfections of an inexpensive bino (such as the old Nikon Monarch 5 or 7) do not bother them.I recently had a debate with a colleague.
I said that since we all are going through a process called „aging“ (I think
He disagreed. His point: since our eyes are deteriorationg over time, we ought to buy better and better (likely more expensive) binoculars -as we do with stronger and stronger glasses - to compensate the loss of sharpness in our eyes.
I found that a ridiculous argument. Any comments?
Especially taking into account this example from Zeiss:
Attachments
Zeiss has great chromatic aberration control but you got carried away in your cherry picking and accidentally posted examples with lower sharpness that disproves the point you were trying to make in this thread.I have compared many SF's and NL's myself for CA and the SF and the FL always beat the NL and EL and Allbinos agrees. The SF 10x32 has the least CA I have ever seen on any binocular I have tested, and the FL 7x42 is close. Swarovski's generally have more CA on the edge than Zeiss's do. Zeiss has more fluorite in their glass. Zeiss owns Schott so they get first shot at the best glass. Swarovski gets the leftovers.
Swarovski NL Pure 8x32 - binoculars review - AllBinos.com
The best binocular tests on the net. The comprehensive database of binoculars with their parameters and users opinions. Interesting articles and comparisons.www.allbinos.com
Carl Zeiss Victory SF 8x32 - binoculars review - AllBinos.com
The best binocular tests on the net. The comprehensive database of binoculars with their parameters and users opinions. Interesting articles and comparisons.Carl Zeiss Victory 8x32 T* FL - binoculars review - AllBinos.com
The best binocular tests on the net. The comprehensive database of binoculars with their parameters and users opinions. Interesting articles and comparisons.Carl Zeiss Victory SF 8x42 - binoculars review - AllBinos.com
The best binocular tests on the net. The comprehensive database of binoculars with their parameters and users opinions. Interesting articles and comparisons.Swarovski EL 10x42 Swarovision - binoculars review - AllBinos.com
The best binocular tests on the net. The comprehensive database of binoculars with their parameters and users opinions. Interesting articles and comparisons.
Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott – A Winning Team
What led to the collaboration between Carl Zeiss, Ernst Abbe and Otto Schott? How did the ZEISS company and the Carl Zeiss Foundation originate? Who played which role in the company? In a company portrait, we explain the origins and highlight the biographies of all the significant players.www.zeiss.com
"Also chromatic aberration correction result, one of the best in the whole history of our tests, is achieved despite such a wide field of view. If you don't like CA effects, the Victory SF 8x32 is definitely your pair of binoculars because it fares distinctly better than all binoculars produced by its main rival, Swarovski. Swarovski binoculars have noticeable problems with chromatic aberration on the edge of the field, which is often narrower than the field of the Zeiss."
Swarovski doesn't use Schott glass because they make their own artisanal stone-ground special glass. Since you are so brave you should go to the Leica forum and tell them they are getting sloppy seconds Schott glass from Zeiss.
Gijs van Ginkel
Well-known member
To clarify discussions about resolution etc. I had written a review of published data entitled "Color vision, brightness, resolution and contrast in binocular images" It can be found on the WEBsite of House of Outdoor. Resolution is defined as the capability of distinguishing between two separate elements or details in an image. That is also what we teach our students in biology and medicine.
Gijs van Ginkel
Gijs van Ginkel
Swarovski and Leica buy all their glass from Schott Glass, which has been owned by Zeiss for years.Zeiss has great chromatic aberration control but you got carried away in your cherry picking and accidentally posted examples with lower sharpness that disproves the point you were trying to make in this thread.
Swarovski doesn't use Schott glass because they make their own artisanal stone-ground special glass. Since you are so brave you should go to the Leica forum and tell them they are getting sloppy seconds Schott glass from Zeiss.
Nikon sport optics does not make or grind glass, either. Every one of their products is outsourced from China, Philippines, or Japan
Schott AG - Wikipedia
"Schott AG is a German multinational glass company specializing in the manufacture of glass and glass-ceramics. Headquartered in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, it is owned by the Carl Zeiss Foundation. The company's founder and namesake, Otto Schott, is credited with the invention of borosilicate glass.
n 1884, Otto Schott, Ernst Abbe, Carl Zeiss and his son Roderich Zeiss founded the Glastechnische Laboratorium Schott & Genossen (Glass Technical Laboratory Schott & Associates) in Jena, Thuringia, Germany[2][3] which initially produced optical glasses for microscopes and telescopes.[4] In 1891, the Carl Zeiss Foundation, founded two years earlier by Ernst Abbe, became a partner in the glass laboratory.[5] Jena glass, an early borosilicate glass, was one of its early manufactured products.[6] Otto Schott's invention of borosilicate glass, resistant to chemicals, heat and temperature change, paved the way for new technical glasses for thermometers, laboratory equipment and gas lamps.[7]"
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Conndomat
United States of Europe
Definitely not!
The sense of hearing develops much earlier than the sense of sight; babies can perceive a wide variety of sounds in the womb while they cannot yet see anything.
We still hear even when we no longer see anything, the sense is constantly active.
The mere fact that it is much more complex and time-consuming to correctly adjust a hearing aid than to find suitable glasses contradicts the idea that the sense of vision is more diverse.
The range of different frequencies that human ears perceive is enormous and varies significantly from person to person.
Andreas
Stone-ground?Swarovski doesn't use Schott glass because they make their own artisanal stone-ground special glass. Since you are so brave you should go to the Leica forum and tell them they are getting sloppy seconds Schott glass from Zeiss.
Holger Merlitz
Well-known member
The difficulty is that contrast eventually defines resolution, and this contrast is not expressed by a single number, rather by an entire curve (the MTF or Modulation Transfer Function). The MTF describes the contrast over a range of length scales or frequencies (of the black-white test pattern). So one has to know the entire MTF to judge the quality of the imaging system and to obtain numbers for its resolution. If the MTF has high values at low frequencies, then the image looks very sharp to the eye, since edges are shown perfectly crisp. If instead the MTF has high values at high frequencies, then the image exhibits a high microcontrast, which is needed to show fine structure on a rough surface. The shapes of MTF curves commonly differ with the optical design, and in camera lens design the optical designer may actually choose from which part of the MTF he would like to have the strongest contributions to the overall contrast. Binoculars are more complex, they have prisms which affect the MTF in a non-trivial way and which cannot simply be calculated during the optical design process. But MTFs can in principle be measured on prototypes.
Years ago some guys on a German binocular discussion board, including myself, wanted to measure MTF curves of binoculars. We teamed up with a service provider for optical measurements on astronomical instruments who was interested in that project. Measuring the MTF of an astronomical objective lens or mirror was straight forward: One had to image a test pattern, and he got particular software which was analyzing the edges and somehow computing the MTF. Meanwhile, we began sending in all kinds of binoculars which we wanted to have measured. Now, binoculars are afocal systems which don't provide a real image of the test pattern, so that another optical component such as a camera lens is needed to take the photo of the test pattern through the binocular. Here the troubles started: Whatever the fellow in his lab tried, it delivered inconsistent results. He used all kinds of lenses of different focal lengths and qualities and got results which just made no sense. It is obvious that an additional component of the image train would deteriorate the overall image quality, but that would be tolerable as long as its contribution did not alter the ranking among the binoculars, yet it did: With one lens, Bino A was better than B, with another lens, B was winning, and so on. Several months later and after lots of frustration, the entire project was given up.
Cheers,
Holger
Years ago some guys on a German binocular discussion board, including myself, wanted to measure MTF curves of binoculars. We teamed up with a service provider for optical measurements on astronomical instruments who was interested in that project. Measuring the MTF of an astronomical objective lens or mirror was straight forward: One had to image a test pattern, and he got particular software which was analyzing the edges and somehow computing the MTF. Meanwhile, we began sending in all kinds of binoculars which we wanted to have measured. Now, binoculars are afocal systems which don't provide a real image of the test pattern, so that another optical component such as a camera lens is needed to take the photo of the test pattern through the binocular. Here the troubles started: Whatever the fellow in his lab tried, it delivered inconsistent results. He used all kinds of lenses of different focal lengths and qualities and got results which just made no sense. It is obvious that an additional component of the image train would deteriorate the overall image quality, but that would be tolerable as long as its contribution did not alter the ranking among the binoculars, yet it did: With one lens, Bino A was better than B, with another lens, B was winning, and so on. Several months later and after lots of frustration, the entire project was given up.
Cheers,
Holger
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ArchStanton
Well-known member
A Zeiss rep told me that Leica and Swarovski use Schott glass but add their own coatings."Swarovski doesn't use Schott glass because they make their own artisanal stone-ground special glass. "
No wonder, Swarovski's don't correct CA as well as Zeiss's do! Stone ground? Really? That is not true!
Swarovski and Leica buy all their lenses from Schott Glass, which is owned by Zeiss.
Leica and Swarovski do get sloppy seconds from Schott glass because Zeiss has owned Schott glass for years.
Schott AG - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
"Schott AG is a German multinational glass company specializing in the manufacture of glass and glass-ceramics. Headquartered in Mainz, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, it is owned by the Carl Zeiss Foundation. The company's founder and namesake, Otto Schott, is credited with the invention of borosilicate glass.
n 1884, Otto Schott, Ernst Abbe, Carl Zeiss and his son Roderich Zeiss founded the Glastechnische Laboratorium Schott & Genossen (Glass Technical Laboratory Schott & Associates) in Jena, Thuringia, Germany[2][3] which initially produced optical glasses for microscopes and telescopes.[4] In 1891, the Carl Zeiss Foundation, founded two years earlier by Ernst Abbe, became a partner in the glass laboratory.[5] Jena glass, an early borosilicate glass, was one of its early manufactured products.[6] Otto Schott's invention of borosilicate glass, resistant to chemicals, heat and temperature change, paved the way for new technical glasses for thermometers, laboratory equipment and gas lamps.[7]"
He was correct. Both Leica and Swarovski get their glass from Schott which has been owned for years by Zeiss.
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henry link
Well-known member
Threads like this are so discouraging to me. The OP has been here for 20 years and yet he is asking the same old newb questions and offering completely unsubstantiated newb answers snatched from thin air.
Nearly everything you need to know about how binoculars actually behave has been covered here multiple times by people who know what they're talking about (there's a search function for that.) More importantly for those who claim to be interested in evaluating optics, the methods for home testing many of the on and off-axis aberrations that plague binoculars have been explained many times and methods for measuring both full and stopped down resolution have been explained many times. Why is that so few of us actually do these things?
Here (I promise for the last time) is a photographic test of the true resolution of two binoculars and how the lower aberrations of one cause it to appear "sharper" even at large line pairs, much larger than what both binoculars can resolve and even for people with average eyesight acuity.
www.birdforum.net
Brands have nothing to do with what you see in the photos. Aberrations quite unrelated to binocular brand have everything to do with what you see. Almost everything about the aberrations that affect "sharpness" can be seen and explained with a boosted magnification star test and the true resolution itself can be accurately measured at boosted magnification for the full aperture and at smaller apertures to simulate the daylight observations. Please stop jawing in the dark and get to it!
That's all from me for now. Tropical Storm Debby brought a large oak tree down on our house and mostly destroyed it, so I'll be dealing with that for quite a while. Happily, no binoculars lost their lives.
Nearly everything you need to know about how binoculars actually behave has been covered here multiple times by people who know what they're talking about (there's a search function for that.) More importantly for those who claim to be interested in evaluating optics, the methods for home testing many of the on and off-axis aberrations that plague binoculars have been explained many times and methods for measuring both full and stopped down resolution have been explained many times. Why is that so few of us actually do these things?
Here (I promise for the last time) is a photographic test of the true resolution of two binoculars and how the lower aberrations of one cause it to appear "sharper" even at large line pairs, much larger than what both binoculars can resolve and even for people with average eyesight acuity.
Victory HT 8x42
Hello, Visiting my son at London, after been with him at his PhD in Economics graduation in the EUI (European University Institute), Firenze, Italy, I made a visit at Harrods. Just to take a look at the place. As the last year, they have DEALS in binoculars. Two were VERY GOOD SALE offers...
www.birdforum.net
Brands have nothing to do with what you see in the photos. Aberrations quite unrelated to binocular brand have everything to do with what you see. Almost everything about the aberrations that affect "sharpness" can be seen and explained with a boosted magnification star test and the true resolution itself can be accurately measured at boosted magnification for the full aperture and at smaller apertures to simulate the daylight observations. Please stop jawing in the dark and get to it!
That's all from me for now. Tropical Storm Debby brought a large oak tree down on our house and mostly destroyed it, so I'll be dealing with that for quite a while. Happily, no binoculars lost their lives.
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That's breaking news, you should let the scientific community know that hearing doesn't deteriorate in the elderly.
"According to ISO 7029:2000 (International Organization for Standardization), the over-60 age group loses hearing of 1dB on average per year. Hearing loss increases over time.1) Approximately 30% of the aged population, or 9 million elderly people, suffer from hearing loss.3) In the 2003 report by the Center for Disease Control (U.S.), presbycusis was the second most common illness next to arthritis in the aged people. Its morbidity has risen with the aging population."
Pathophysiology of Age-Related Hearing Loss (Peripheral and Central)
Age-related hearing loss (presbycusis) refers to bilaterally symmetrical hearing loss resulting from aging process. Presbycusis is a complex phenomenon characterized by audiometric threshold shift, deterioration in speech-understanding and speech-perception ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
ArchStanton
Well-known member
Maybe it’s the coatings that differentiate the brands and models. When asked if the glass for their scopes was made in Japan, a Leupold rep said it didn’t matter where the glass was made and what was important how they finished it. He never answered my question.
Optical glass has to be stone-ground with hard abrasive stones, usually diamonds. Yes even the almighty Zeiss is reduced to humbly stone grinding glass.
Conndomat
United States of Europe
What's this nonsense, I didn't even say that!
It was about whether the eye is more variable than the ear and that is highly doubtful!
Andreas
I stand corrected, on both counts.
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Conndomat
United States of Europe
I'm just wondering how you could tell from my post that the hearing doesn't deteriorate with age?
There are hearing aids for a reason, which sometimes even younger people need, just like glasses!
Andreas