the binoculars that Pauline got me for my birthday.... my "macronoculars"...
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| The Macronoculars |
So... binos, every naturalist usually has some... why blog about them...
well, for a start, they are extremely light and compact...
they give a good, bright view...
they have the same field of view as my 10x binos...
oops....
yes, I've already got binoculars...
but my Papilio binos have a trick up their sleeve...
they are, it says on the side, "EXTREMELY-CLOSE FOCUSING"...
in fact, they focus down to 50cm...
one foot seven and three-quarter inches for oldies!
That is very close...
it gives you views like these:
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| You can count the hairs on a Bumble Bee's backside... |
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| ...the little indentations on an Oil Beetles 'wing' covers... |
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| ...the number of spikes on a Violet Ground Beetle's hind leg.... |
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| ...or simply sit in the sun and watch a bee make cherries!! |
But... because the human eye has a feature that cameras don't...
they picture the scene in a very different way.
Our eyes can accommodate very rapidly...
so the picture you see in the binos immediately has much greater depth...
you can look from front to back of the insect... or down into the flower...
without needing to re-focus...
with a camera, you would need a stationary subject...
and use a tripod...
to either close the iris enough to get the depth of focus...
or take three or more pictures... refocusing each time... before stitching them together.
The camera just cannot cut it!
How have Pentax managed this?
Easy, they looked at how the eye looks at things...
the closer your eyes are to a subject...
the closer together they become...
a stereo microscope works the same way...
so Pentax then designed a focusing system that replicates the angle of movement...
You can just see the rails in this picture...
so the front [objective] lenses move closer together as they focus forward.
From this....
through this...
to this...
Does the last picture remind you of anything out there in the wild?
How about this little jumping spider...
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| I've rotated this... view Matt's original here [apologies now for the 'new'-look flickr... or Fumblr!] |
I would thoroughly recommend any serious or keen amateur naturalist to get a pair of these!!
The book in the background of the "macronoculars" pix is a new triple language guide to the vertebrates of Britain, France and the Benelux countries...
but in Dutch you get only the names...
they obviously rely on the Dutch reading English or French for the descriptions!!
More about this book at a later date.
4 comments:
Very nice beetle photos!
Ta muchly... busy tidying house!!
The one thing that no binos/monos/camera can do is add the element of perception - arising from the fact that the eyes are connected to the brain and therefore how we see things is influenced by past experience, personal preference and so on.
Even so, a pair of these would be very handy.........great photos. The one thing the eyes can't do is have a good long look at something beautiful once it has toddled off under a bush or flown away !!
Jean, I heartily agree... and even the plants fade away... but often take longer.
On the perception side... a lot of digital photographers now use HDR [High Dynamic Resolution] to try and get the light as we perceive it... three to five pix... all at different exposures... software adjusted and blended to create the "perfect" picture... but, unless used lightly, it doesn't work... that is why, nowadays, you see these pictures with a "glow", a halo effect!!
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