New Binoculars
It's been a while since I've posted. I've seen close to a dozen new birds I can add to my life list and I will list those in a hopefully soon upcoming post. But this one is about binoculars.
Binocular research can be a very addictive pasttime, depending on your personal degree of obsessive compulsiveness. Hmm. It looks like my last post was Aug 29, and I ended with this:
In the meantime, while waiting for the 10x42 Nobles to arrive at the Scope City chain store in San Francisco, my wife and I made our way to Mendocino for a weekend, and I made my way into the optics store there, Out of this World (on the web at www.discounttelescopes.com). They are reputed to be the number one binocular dealer on the north coast of California and just happen to be located in my favorite little town north of San Francisco. Well, they no longer carry Celestron binos because they feel the quality that was once there is no longer there and they didn't want to sell a product they couldn't stand behind 100%. At least that was their story. But, they carried the Nikon Monarchs, in particular this year's new revision. The owner claimed that the Monarchs blew away all their competition at the buying shows this year. Nikon, she claimed, outdid themselves and apparently were trying to establish their excellent reputation in the mid-priced roof category.
I looked at four pairs of the 10x42 Monarchs in order to make sure I got one that I really thought was excellent -- something you don't get to do over the internet -- though she made me admit that I was obessive compulsive first. She said it wasn't bad, that her husband was an OCD basket case as well, but that it just had to be recognized.
At any rate two of the four I liked, and the other two just didn't do it for me. The main thing I was looking for at the time was the least amount of chromatic aberration, that is, color fringing, especially on the sharp edges of dark objects against a bright sky. Unfortunately that was really the only thing I was looking for.
After finally making my purchase I wandered out onto the coastal cliffs across the street (this really is one of coolest towns I've been to) to look at shorebirds. I'm pretty sure I was observing a black-footed albatross floating from kelp bed to kelp bed chomping on something. At some point while looking across the cove at a well lighted beach scene I must have closed one eye because I noticed a difference in brightness between the two barrels of the binoculars. I kept closing one eye then the other and not only was the brightness different but on of the barrels had a markedly cooler/bluer color cast. So half an hour after getting them I took them back to the store and spent another 15 minutes trying to figure out which of the remaining three pairs was the other one I liked. I finally decided, made the switch, and wandered back to the shore to continue the enjoyment of my latest expensive gadget.
Well, I spent the next day or so doubting whether these binoculars were optically any better than my $50 Bushnells. I also spent the last month and a half trying to figure out if there is something more subtle wrong with them. They have always felt just a little weird when I look through them, like my eyes just aren't as comfortable as they were with the cheapos. I've had several excellent birder with excellent optics look through them and give me their honest opinion, but they all seemed to think they were just fine, if anything, quite a good image. But I never thought they were really being very critical, so my doubts continued. A few days ago I finally noticed something very subtle that may explain everything.
When focusing on a tiny contrasty object in the distance, if I focus just past the object, toward infinity, the object separates into two blurry objects very close together before eventually forming a huge blob. My thought is that as the object blurs it should do so into a single shape or object. If it is creating two shapes the barrels are out of alignment -- bad collimation.
A very slight misalignment but probably just enough to cause all the funkiness I've been observing. There is no double image in normal usage as I think my brain is working overtime to correctly resolve the image, but that extra work is what causes eye strain, eye fatigue, and headaches. So, I'm sending them in for warranty repair ore replacement.
I hope they just realign them as I love everything else (well almost everything else) about them. The image (BTW I finally realized just how incredibly better the image is than the Bushnells) is bright, contrasty, sharp, and overall excellent. There is some barrel distortion that is noticeable when panning the horizon, but I saw the same thing when looking through Leica 10x42's so it must be a factor of that size configuration.
And yes, there was one more thing that really bugged me. These binos are supposed to have a close-focusing distance of 9.8 feet. I couldn't get a good focus on anything closer than 12 or 15 feet. since that was not a major factor in these I thought to just ignore it. Well, one night I was absentmindedly rotating the focus wheel back and forth stopping against the close focus side. I had noticed that on the far-focus end of the travel that the wheel stopped abruptly and very satisfyingly. But at the close focus side it just sort of tightened up until it wouldn't go any further. So I was pushing it back and forth, maybe a little stronger each time, when unexpectedly I heard a gaseous 'POP', very similar to opening a Coke can. Suddenly the wheel kept on rotating until it came to an abrupt and satisfying stop. And when I looked though lenses I had a perfectly focused image at about 6 1/2 feet. My immediate fear was that I just broke my binocular's seal and released all of the fogproofing nitrogen. The people at Birdforum reassured me that the binoculars are not pressurized. They are sealed, but at the same pressure as our atmosphere. They theorized that perhaps some extra lubricant was blocking a passage that the gas moved through as the focusing mechanism moved and when I pushed it too hard it cleared the passageway allowing the nitrogen gas to move freely inside the binocular and the focusing mechanism to also move its full distance. I certainly hope they are right.
I can test it and probably will before I send it back for the collimation alignment by taking a hot shower with my binos then tossing them into the freezer for a while to see if they fog up or have water droplets inside them. It seems extreme but if I'm sending them back anyway it won't really hurt if they do leak, in fact it'll save sending them back again on down the road if they fog up.
Binocular research can be a very addictive pasttime, depending on your personal degree of obsessive compulsiveness. Hmm. It looks like my last post was Aug 29, and I ended with this:
Once I have a good set of binoculars I need never waste time talking about them and can focus instead on the birds--which will look awesome through my new binoculars!I guess that statement was wrong. I've spent hours per day, days worth of time total, at Birdforums.net reading and posting almost exclusively in the binocular forums. I can't even imagine what they talk about in the regular birding forums. But with that research and a phone call to Eagle Optics I moved away from the Celestron Nobles and toward the Nikon Monarchs. I called to ask what they thought of the Nobles and what other models they recommended in the same category and price range. While they definitely like the Nobles, he said that almost everyone that looked at the Nobles side by side with the Monarchs in their store bought the Monarchs.
In the meantime, while waiting for the 10x42 Nobles to arrive at the Scope City chain store in San Francisco, my wife and I made our way to Mendocino for a weekend, and I made my way into the optics store there, Out of this World (on the web at www.discounttelescopes.com). They are reputed to be the number one binocular dealer on the north coast of California and just happen to be located in my favorite little town north of San Francisco. Well, they no longer carry Celestron binos because they feel the quality that was once there is no longer there and they didn't want to sell a product they couldn't stand behind 100%. At least that was their story. But, they carried the Nikon Monarchs, in particular this year's new revision. The owner claimed that the Monarchs blew away all their competition at the buying shows this year. Nikon, she claimed, outdid themselves and apparently were trying to establish their excellent reputation in the mid-priced roof category.
I looked at four pairs of the 10x42 Monarchs in order to make sure I got one that I really thought was excellent -- something you don't get to do over the internet -- though she made me admit that I was obessive compulsive first. She said it wasn't bad, that her husband was an OCD basket case as well, but that it just had to be recognized.
At any rate two of the four I liked, and the other two just didn't do it for me. The main thing I was looking for at the time was the least amount of chromatic aberration, that is, color fringing, especially on the sharp edges of dark objects against a bright sky. Unfortunately that was really the only thing I was looking for.
After finally making my purchase I wandered out onto the coastal cliffs across the street (this really is one of coolest towns I've been to) to look at shorebirds. I'm pretty sure I was observing a black-footed albatross floating from kelp bed to kelp bed chomping on something. At some point while looking across the cove at a well lighted beach scene I must have closed one eye because I noticed a difference in brightness between the two barrels of the binoculars. I kept closing one eye then the other and not only was the brightness different but on of the barrels had a markedly cooler/bluer color cast. So half an hour after getting them I took them back to the store and spent another 15 minutes trying to figure out which of the remaining three pairs was the other one I liked. I finally decided, made the switch, and wandered back to the shore to continue the enjoyment of my latest expensive gadget.
Well, I spent the next day or so doubting whether these binoculars were optically any better than my $50 Bushnells. I also spent the last month and a half trying to figure out if there is something more subtle wrong with them. They have always felt just a little weird when I look through them, like my eyes just aren't as comfortable as they were with the cheapos. I've had several excellent birder with excellent optics look through them and give me their honest opinion, but they all seemed to think they were just fine, if anything, quite a good image. But I never thought they were really being very critical, so my doubts continued. A few days ago I finally noticed something very subtle that may explain everything.
When focusing on a tiny contrasty object in the distance, if I focus just past the object, toward infinity, the object separates into two blurry objects very close together before eventually forming a huge blob. My thought is that as the object blurs it should do so into a single shape or object. If it is creating two shapes the barrels are out of alignment -- bad collimation.
A very slight misalignment but probably just enough to cause all the funkiness I've been observing. There is no double image in normal usage as I think my brain is working overtime to correctly resolve the image, but that extra work is what causes eye strain, eye fatigue, and headaches. So, I'm sending them in for warranty repair ore replacement.
I hope they just realign them as I love everything else (well almost everything else) about them. The image (BTW I finally realized just how incredibly better the image is than the Bushnells) is bright, contrasty, sharp, and overall excellent. There is some barrel distortion that is noticeable when panning the horizon, but I saw the same thing when looking through Leica 10x42's so it must be a factor of that size configuration.
And yes, there was one more thing that really bugged me. These binos are supposed to have a close-focusing distance of 9.8 feet. I couldn't get a good focus on anything closer than 12 or 15 feet. since that was not a major factor in these I thought to just ignore it. Well, one night I was absentmindedly rotating the focus wheel back and forth stopping against the close focus side. I had noticed that on the far-focus end of the travel that the wheel stopped abruptly and very satisfyingly. But at the close focus side it just sort of tightened up until it wouldn't go any further. So I was pushing it back and forth, maybe a little stronger each time, when unexpectedly I heard a gaseous 'POP', very similar to opening a Coke can. Suddenly the wheel kept on rotating until it came to an abrupt and satisfying stop. And when I looked though lenses I had a perfectly focused image at about 6 1/2 feet. My immediate fear was that I just broke my binocular's seal and released all of the fogproofing nitrogen. The people at Birdforum reassured me that the binoculars are not pressurized. They are sealed, but at the same pressure as our atmosphere. They theorized that perhaps some extra lubricant was blocking a passage that the gas moved through as the focusing mechanism moved and when I pushed it too hard it cleared the passageway allowing the nitrogen gas to move freely inside the binocular and the focusing mechanism to also move its full distance. I certainly hope they are right.
I can test it and probably will before I send it back for the collimation alignment by taking a hot shower with my binos then tossing them into the freezer for a while to see if they fog up or have water droplets inside them. It seems extreme but if I'm sending them back anyway it won't really hurt if they do leak, in fact it'll save sending them back again on down the road if they fog up.
posted by Chuck Baldwin at 12:39 AM
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