Hello all! I recently joined your forum and was hoping I could get some help and answers in a couple of areas.
My girlfriends talked me into joining the local nature club and I have appropriated my fathers 6x30 Sans & Strieffe porro prism binoculars until I decide on a better pair to buy. The right barrel focuses razor sharp, but the left barrel does not seem to get that sharp. What might the problem be and how could it be corrected, if at all?
In researching various posts on different binoculars, I keep running across the terms glare, veiling glare, ghosting, haze and stray light. I suspect some of these are the same. Can anyone explain them more fully as to how they would evidence themselves, and a good test to check for them?
thanks
Irene
Is it too much to assume you're in central MD or on the Eastern Shore? In either case you have a perfect excuse to drive over to Cape May and visit CMBO's shop where they can go over your existing binoculars. If you splurge for the fall weekend coming up there'll be a whole auditorium full of optics to learn and yearn from.
Meanwhile, you can take your S&S to your optometrist. S/he can check the diopter setting for your eyes and also see if the binocular is clean. It probably isn't, or it may be slightly out of alignment (collimation). If I were you, I'd put the $75 you might spend on cleaning them towards a mid-range binocular in the 7x-8x range (we all have our favorites; I'll refrain). Your 6x might be a little frustrating for looking over the reservoirs, the Bay, and the Blackwater marshes. If by chance you have great eyes and no optometrist, bring your binoculars to one of the Maryland Ornithological Society regional meetings: Anne Arundel Bird Club, Talbot County Bird Club, the Baltimore group that meets at Cvlburn Arboretum, etc. Then ask for the group's binocular expert.
Even if you get a new pair sooner rather than latter, you may eventually want to get the S&S cleaned. Several of us use Nicolas Crista, on the web at NRC Optics. He's in Massachusetts.
You might like a book called PETE DUNNE ON BIRDWATCHING, not only for what it says about binoculars and scopes but also because it has a lot of good advice for wandering around looking at nature. And he's connected with CMBO, so what you read about binocular choice you can see in action at one of the two stores.
For the sake of truth in advertising, I should say that I'm a CMBO member but Pete doesn't know me from Adam. They don't give me a percentage!
A lot of people do not really care. But I can take various pairs and test indoors, approaching a bright light bulb and some I can get closer than others before blurry rings appear in the periphery. So you can test it, but stores have weird light that is all over the place. Too bright.
It comes into play when the sun is badly behind the target. But then, the birds are black silhouettes anyway and the sun is bad no matter what.