Rolling Ball affect?

So I've never heard of this until the past few days and hear that Swaro's tend to have it, especially the EL's?  Now that I've just bought EL's I'm worried it will affect me.  That being said would I have noticed it in the month I had the binos in house and using them daily to pan around the timber in my back yard and while out shed hunting?

Rolling ball is the Illusion while panning that the image is rolling like a marble on a table. This is caused by a lack of pincushion distortion. When the field is too flat in a binocular, rolling ball occurs. Some are more sensitive than others. In any case, the EL does not show this, as the designers intentionally put in pincushion distortion. It is the Swarovision EL that shows the effect (2010 and newer).

Edited by Bitterroot Bulls - February/22/2011 at 15:18

In fact, most optical designers intentionally incorporate some pincusion distortion in the view to counter the rolling ball effect, which, like most all other optical aberrations, some find more objectionable than others.  The new "Swarovision EL" has a field flattener to eliminate linear distortion and try to get the largest sweet spot possible, sharp out to the edges of the field.  They succeeded in doing so, at the expense of the rolling ball effect when panning.  Tradeoffs are almost always inevitable whenever a designer tries to optimize one or more optical characteristics.  In this case, some will find the advantages of a flat field and huge sweet spot worth the negative tradeoff when panning and others won't. 

The older EL's large "sweet spot" is just fine with me.  

If you do not see, do not look for it.  Some people find it disturbing and some hardly notice it.  It is very individual.

muddy wrote: So I've never heard of this until the past few days and hear that Swaro's tend to have it, especially the EL's?  Now that I've just bought EL's I'm worried it will affect me.  That being said would I have noticed it in the month I had the binos in house and using them daily to pan around the timber in my back yard and while out shed hunting?

Klamath wrote: So take Koshkin's advise and forget about it.  There is absolutely no sense in worrying about it.  Many "optics afflictions" are in fact self inflicted.  If you don't see a fault, don't look for it just because you heard someplace this or that binocular is supposed to have this or that fault.  It does not mean you will be able to see it or should even waste energy looking for it.  Just use whatever EL it is you have and enjoy it.  You have as good a binocular as your money can buy in the first place.

They're the "older" ELs with Swarobrite instead of the newer ones.  They're awesome.  If I could post pics I'd show you the 4 point shed I found with a 14 inch G2 while using them.  

By the way, thanks for setting my mind at ease.  I wasn't terribly worried since I've been using them for well over a month without noticing anything but awesome.

The worst rolling ball effect that i have seen was on a pair of Kruger Optical's Malhuer binoculars that my friend bought, even worse than SV.

I definately saw a rolling ball effect when I panned through Sportsmans warehouse while looking through some Pentax DCF WP 10x42. I hope the Pentax DCF SP isnt the same. Thats the only reason I never bought a pair of Pentax DCF SP, I was worried they would do the same. I hate the rolling ball effect.