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How bad can an astronomical binocular get?

BinocularSky

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BinocularSky

BinocularSky

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Anyone paying attention to the "What Binoculars do you own" thread might have noticed that I have a 12-60x70 zoom binocular (according to the blurb it is "The worlds (sic) most powerful low light zoom Binoculars") that I cart around to talks, exhibitions, etc. as an example of "what not to buy". For the first time, today I gave it a really thorough going over. I am now of the opinion that someone asked the designer/manufacturer the rhetorical question: "How bad can an astronomical binocular get?" and this was taken up as a personal challenge. They list from anything between £55 and £350!

  • First of all, they are zoom binoculars. If you are unsure what that means, at the 12x end of the zoom, they are like looking down a pair of toilet-roll tubes (only with worse image quality) and anything more than that gives you a wider apparent field whose quality gets progressively worse as you zoom in.
  • They have "the latest" ruby coatings. Coatings are meant to be anti-reflective. Shine a white light onto ruby coated optics and see how much is reflected: all red, of course, so what's left to find its way through "the latest BAK-6 prisms" to your eye gives the image a ghastly dead blue-grey cast.
  • Collimation is dire: two images for the price of one here!
  • It may give two images, but they are both impossible to focus properly.
  • The blurb states that you can "zoom-in (sic) seconds from 12x to 60x". This is actually quite an accurate statement: it does take several seconds, because the zoom mechanism is so darned stiff.
  • The eyepiece bridge is so rocky that Sly Stallone might have to consider suing them for infringement of intellectual copyright.
  • I had assumed that, along with most low-end 70mm binoculars, they would be internally stopped down to an effective aperture of about 63mm. I was wrong. The designer and manufacturer of these "70mm aperture low-light" binoculars have truly excelled themselves in this characteristic: these are stopped down to 52mm!
  • You'd think that by using ruby coatings to eliminate the red end of the spectrum, then shoving a mask in the prism housings to remove the worst 45% of the image-forming rays, that colour correction might be pretty good. You'd be wrong.

So, have I discovered the answer to the question, "How bad can an astronomical binocular get?" or is there worse out there?  :evil:

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DirkSteele

DirkSteele

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"The eyepiece bridge is so rocky that Sly Stallone might have to consider suing them for infringement of intellectual copyright"

You get a like for that!  And a very good piece to warn unsuspecting buyers of what to avoid.

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BinocularSky

BinocularSky

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Blimey! These un-brand-named ones (well, would YOU want your name on them?) seem positively stellar (ghastly pun intended) by comparison!

On the batphone, so expect weird autocorrect

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michael.h.f.wilkinson

michael.h.f.wilkinson

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"or is there worse out there?"

quite possibly, a review from Allbinos http://www.allbinos.com/17.1-binoculars_reviews-summary-Steel_ladle_50x50_An_extreme_pair_of_binoculars.html

Cheers

Neil

That is awesome. The state of the prisms and glue on the optics suggests QC was done either by blind people or by people with an absolute hatred of mankind. Alternatively, QC was not done, and the only tool available to the "engineers" putting the prism housing together was a hammer (or potentially a bigger hammer if the prisms wouldn't fit. They weren't true engineers of course, or they would have stuck the shards back on with duck tape. When applied across the entire surface of the prism, that might actually have improved the viewing comfort (seeing nothing is better than getting a splitting headache, after all)

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  • 2 weeks later...
Oortrageous

Oortrageous

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There is a phenomenon in the cycling world, where low cost bicycles are often marketed with outlandish performance claims. They are known as BSO's - bike shaped objects, not to be confused with an actual bicycle. Maybe the acronym is appropriate here as well :).

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Oortrageous

Oortrageous

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Excellent! Consider it nicked. :grin:

Haha, go forth and spread the BSO warning, glad it transcends hobbies!

Ootrageous-you beat me too it. That's exactly what I thought of as well!

Sent from my RM-892_eu_euro1_249 using Tapatalk

Seems useful to have one less new acronym to learn for astronomy - this one will be easy to remember eh! Haha.

May have just bought my own potentially BSO's tonight, a very impulse purchase... from Lidl, 8x60 Bressers. the 10x50's seem to have had good press, looking forward to getting these toward the night skies! Regardless, having played with them tonight just looking at planes passing overhead I'm pleased with them for day time use. And they've certainly confirmed that I much prefer looking with two eyes than one! Steve, I will definitely be having a look at your website and book in the coming months! 

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Oortrageous

Oortrageous

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Well, it seems my Lidl bins have paid for themselves. I've actually seen Albireo colourfully split! Now I know where to look I'm sure I'll have an awesome view through the dob when there's a night worth having it out. I have to admit, the 8 x magnification is not conducive to what I would describe as a steady image, for me personally. For context, I guess the bins weigh around (guess work vs bags of sugar) 800 grams, and I'm relatively shakeless - I work in electronics and regularly handle very small devices ( http://www.smtinline.com/html-en/0201.html - to the left of the ones with 0's on them, directly under the ants head). And I found the amount of wobble almost distracting! Will have to get a monopod and compare with these! Suffice to say that I feel these are at the limits of what I can comfortably hand hold - of course, anyone reading this may well be different!

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ChrisLX200

ChrisLX200

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Or have I spotted something else?! I was looking in Cygnus and was definitely seeing two points of light, yellow and blue, but the more I read the more I doubt I could split them in the 8x60's!

Oh I think you spotted Alberio all right. Easy to plit with 10x50 so not much of a stretch to believe you did the same with 8x60.

ChrisH

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Astrobits

Astrobits

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My favourite bins magnify 225 times!

It is a neat marketing trick to quote the area magnification and not the linear.

7 x 7 = 50 ( if you are a salesman ). Simples!

(My favourite bins are really 15 x 50's)

Nigel

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