Olympus 10x50 DPS I - End User Sample Images

[Flying Eye]

Hi All,

I've figured out how to use a Microsoft Lifecam Cinema 5000HD webcam to obtain some fairly telling images using these binoculars. The cam is mounted a-focal style to the left eyepiece in each case. A resolution of 640x480 was found to give a nicely filled frame with zoom set to 10, a focus of 23 was used and that seemed about right for this task.

What I am hoping is that they are fairly informative for a potential purchaser.

Also, in future I might be able to subject other sets to testing in this way and post further image sets for other models.

I do hope these prove useful.

For now I have uploaded to a web album. I may make other arrangements if people think this sort of thing could be useful for the future.

Here is where I put them, captions explain what I am trying to show with each shot.

LINK

[Hawksmoor]

Followed your link and looked at your image. If the clipping on your bins is caused by undersized prisms the same could be said of my Helios bins as the clipping on mine is identical.

cheers George

[BinocularSky]

Certainly interesting, and would be more so if you did it for several binoculars in order to enable them to be compared. Of course, the really important image is the last one, i.e. what you actually see through it. Despite the prism clipping, it did not show obtrusive vignetting.

Also (and I don't apologise for harping on about this), if you are buying a binocular that costs approximately the same as one medium quality eyepiece, what are your reasonable expectations? Of course corners are going to be cut and compromises made -- and quality control will be almost entirely absent.

[Flying Eye]

I'm hoping to add some images to show CA and a few other bits as the weather will allow. Assorted bins may or not be waterproof, but even worse, the web cam definitely isn't.

One thing I wanted was to give someone an idea of what the consequence of the undersized prisms might be, and how it might affect what you see, or not. I was not sure what to expect on that as this is new turf for me, and I've not seen the effect "in use" described anywhere so far. Maybe I searched for the wrong things.

I've only got 1 other pair of bins and a monocular, and would like to add reports for them too ideally. My funds and need to have more pairs will dictate the pace of having more for comparison. Since it only takes a webcam and a target at about 6 metres it may not challenge too many to do some of these as well, thus adding to it all. I'm happy to show how it was done. Possibly a post in the DIY section.

As for expectations, well, I've tried to avoid them, and simply show that which is observable, I'll leave it up to the reader to take a view on it all for themselves. Nothing is better than looking though them for yourself, and forming an opinion based on what you see, letting you decide how well or not that works for you in each case.

The really big thing I found out while doing this was that since it can be made to focus and expose reliably at various settings, the web cam can score over the human eye in a number of areas and thus can make some features more obvious than they would otherwise be. I found it's really helpful in amplifying the various aspects of the view on offer, which helped me to assess how I felt about it rather better.

I know some have rather knocked the strap and case. I find them to be adequate. If there were savings that were so desperately needing to be made then I would have preferred for them to not have been included and the saving put toward even better optics. However I have reason to doubt that savings were needed this badly as these sell for nearly 30% less in other countries; maybe the idea is that some smaller countries are left to subsidise other larger ones, as the purchasing clout gets brought to bear.

As for QC, they must have some and be doing something right; I tested with Bahtinov masks and almost wasted the time they took to make, as Mr Olympus has sent them out as spot on for collimation as anyone could wish for! I very much doubt that if I even found the screws I could make them any better than they are. The crud inside the tubes really is a schoolboy error though.

As things stand the prism design decision is not the best it could have been in my personal view. (others seem to find a way for this sort of money) I'd much prefer getting the basics sound and frills avoided. These bins are fairly close to doing just that. They don't offer bad value for the £49.51 inc. price that was being asked for them at the time.