Zeiss Victory Harpia
95mm Scope Review
I recently reviewed the Harpia 85,
smaller sibling to the scope on test here. I tested it the way I usually do
bino’s, but for astronomy like a telescope too.
Mostly, I found the Harpia 85 to be
really excellent: compact and light, it performed better than I expected by
day, giving sharp, detailed wide and vivid views across a big zoom range and
with minimal false colour.
But what really surprised me was
its performance for astronomy. No, it couldn’t give the ultra-sharp high-power
views of an 85mm astro’ telescope like Tele Vue’s TV-85, but it gave great
casual deep-sky views; of the Moon at medium power too.
Like almost all scopes, though, the
Harpia is a refractor. And refractors have a problem: they’re hard to scale. So
whilst a 1cm increase from 85mm to 95mm might not sound a lot, it likely pushes
the envelope for what is already a compact and complex optical system. So has
the Harpia 95 scaled well? As usual, read on to find out.
At A Glance
|
Magnification |
23x-70x (3x zoom) |
|
Objective Size |
95mm |
|
Eye Relief |
~13mm measured |
|
Actual
Field of View |
3.4° |
|
Apparent field of view |
72° |
|
Close focus |
4.2m measured, 4.5m claimed |
|
Transmissivity |
88% |
|
Length |
408mm claimed (~440mm w/ eyepiece) |
|
Weight |
2078g |
Data from Zeiss/Me.
What’s in the Box?
Just like the smaller version, the
Harpia 95 gets a long, thin version of Zeiss’ premium Victory binocular box,
with a magnetic catch, a thick foam lining and ... a huge image of a Harpy
Eagle.
Harpia is Made in Germany, unlike the Japan-made Gavia.
All you get in the box is the Scope: the eyepiece is an
accessory.
Design and Build
Zeiss currently have two lines of spotting scopes – Victory
Harpia and Gavia. The Harpia comes in 95mm and 85mm apertures and is Zeiss’
premium scope, part of a range of top-end German-made products under the
‘Victory’ label. The Gavia comes under the mid-price Conquest sub-brand and is
made in Japan.
Zeiss have thrown everything at the Harpia, including
multiple FL glass elements, to create a cutting-edge scope with a broad zoom
range, an extremely close near focus and a wide field of view at all
magnifications.
The technology to deliver such a leading range of abilities
doesn’t come cheap, though: the eyepiece alone is more than many mid-priced
scopes. That said, plenty of other brands – not all as prestigious as Zeiss –
do sell scopes in the Harpia’s price range.
If you’re used to scopes from those other brands, the Harpia
has an unusual feature. Zoom control is on the body, not the eyepiece, so there
is currently only one eyepiece available for both 85mm and 95mm models.
Zeiss Harpia is part of a range of premium products under the
‘Victory’ label (here with 10x42 Victory SFs).
The Harpia 85 for comparison.
Body
First impressions? I was surprised at how small and light the
Harpia 95 is, much lighter than my Tele Vue 85 for example, at just over 2 Kg.
It’s not that much larger or heavier than the smaller model. The Harpia feels
insubstantial compared to a typical Astro’ telescope of similar aperture.
Zeiss are coy about what the Harpia is made of for some
reason, but given how light it is I’m guessing either a reinforced composite
like the old FL range of binoculars, or perhaps magnesium like the Gavia.
Used as I am to astronomical telescopes from the likes of
Tele Vue, Takahashi and Astro Physics, the Harpia’s outward appearance seemed
almost ... well, a little plasticky really, whilst also feeling much more like
a mass-market consumer product (a camera maybe) than most telescopes I review.
Closer inspection reveals excellent fit and finish, though,
with smooth black armour on top and a nicely textured area at the back/bottom
for grabbing the scope to move it about. I did notice that the smooth part of
the armour is quite prone to nail scratches and marking.
At the front is a sliding dew-shield/sun-shade that clicks
out with a refined and smooth action. At the other end is a port with a bayonet
fitting for the eyepiece, with an optical component (prism or possibly lens)
sealed into the base of it, so there’s no way for water or dust to enter the
scope body.
Despite its light weight, the Harpia is nitrogen filled and
waterproof to 400 mbar, same as their binoculars (and the cheaper Gavia too). I
didn’t test it to that degree, but it survived heavy rain with no problems.
Surprisingly, this turned out to be a great feature for astronomy: in showery
weather I wasn’t worried about leaving the Harpia out.
Focuser
The
Harpia 95’s focuser is the same as 85’s, but it’s unusual, at least for me.
The
focuser is the broader of the two deeply-ribbed rings that encircle the scope
at the back, the narrower one behind it being the 3x zoom control (see above).
Unusually, it integrates dual speeds into the single ring:
large movements make coarse focus shifts and smaller movements fine ones.
The fine
focus has a very light touch indeed and makes very fine adjustments. When you
reach the coarse part of the focuser travel, you feel a slight ‘bump’ in the
action and the action becomes heavier as coarse focus engages.
This
two-speed mechanism mostly worked well on the 85, with its snappy focus, making
it easy to find that very subtle best focus point. Here, though, I found it
more difficult to use for reasons I’ll explain in due course.
Even at
best, though, I sometimes found the dual-speed function made the focuser
frustrating to use: I’d focus through then
back up, only for the focus point to have moved because I’d gone through the
fine/coarse threshold without realising it. As for the 85, there’s a learning
curve if you’re not used to this type of focuser.
I
measured close focus at a very good 4.2m, a bit less than the claimed 4.5m. But
compared to the 85mm model, it’s a metre more, so the Harpia 95 isn’t quite as
well suited to long-range microscopy of insects and flowers, if that’s your
thing.
I left
the Harpia out for some hours in temperatures around freezing, to see if the
focuser and/or zoom would stiffen up. Just as for the smaller version, they
didn’t.
Focuser is the wider front ring, 3x zoom control behind,
twist to the left to zoom in.
Optics - Objectives
The fixed part of the objective appears to be a triplet
comprising a single front element of crown glass, with a large air gap and a
crown/flint doublet behind (see below).
I assume that the two crowns are a premium high-fluoride ED
glass, perhaps mated with some sort of special flint: Zeiss state, “FL glasses and other specially
formulated glass types”. It’s interesting to note that the cheaper Gavia also
has “HD Optics” and two crown elements, but is not as perfectly corrected for
false colour.
Well behind the Harpia’s objective are a focusing lens and
then a separate zoom lens assembly that effectively alters the focal length of
the objective. It’s a complex optical system and it needs to be to make it as
compact and portable as it is, whilst still giving low aberrations.
The zoom control varies the objective’s effective focal
length between 174mm and 523mm (the eyepiece F.L. is fixed at 7.48mm), giving a
focal ratio between F1.83 and F5.5, a little faster even than the Harpia 85!
At
the low-power end, less than F2 is crazy fast by astro’ telescope standards, especially
at this aperture, but false colour isn’t the problem you expect because it’s
only that fast at the lowest power of 23x. At the top end, 70x in a F5.5
triplet doesn’t sound too challenging. For context, fitting a Takahashi FSQ-106
imaging scope with a medium power eyepiece would give an optical system with
similar spec’s and I’d expect it to perform well at that magnification.
The pinkish T* coatings (a Zeiss trademark for almost a
century) are very transparent and give an excellent overall transmission of
88%. The coatings also include Zeiss’ LotuTecTM water-repellent
treatment that sheds rain and makes it easier to wipe away fingerprints.
In terms of stray light protection, the tube is painted matt
black inside and has two knife-edge baffles, one immediately behind the
objective (see below). The lens ring is micro-ridge-baffled against veiling
flare; but with the hood extended, flare shouldn’t be a problem anyway.
Zeiss’ signature T* coatings (this lens had a few marks in
it!)
Laser test showing the widely spaced triplet objective
configuration.
OTA sports proper knife-edge baffles to suppress stray light.
Optics – Eyepiece
The
Harpia 95 shares its lone fixed-focal-length (7.48mm) eyepiece with the 85mm
model. The eyepiece is quite large and has a huge (31mm diameter), flat eye
lens.
The
eyepiece secures to the scope via twist-lock bayonet fitting with solid metal
blades that holds it very securely. You have to press in a button to twist and
remove it. A trivial gripe is that the alignment dot is positioned between two
of the bayonet blades and so hard to spot.
The
downside of the integrated eyepiece approach is that you’re stuck with one
eyepiece (at present anyway), whether you like its characteristics or not. The advantage is that the zoom control ring is
much larger and more convenient than it could be if the eyepiece zoomed (much
easier with gloves) and has a very good zoom range of 3x.
As I’ve
said, the zoom magnification range, 23-70x on the Harpia 95, is large for a
spotting scope. But using interchangeable 1 ¼” push-fit eyepieces in the Gavia
85, via Zeiss’ own ‘Astro Adapter’, could give a much larger range of
magnifications. I’m not aware of a similar adapter for the Harpia (and the
bayonet isn’t the same).
The
Harpia eyepiece is expensive for a non-zoom item. At around £500 it’s well into
premium astro’-eyepiece territory, but with much less glass (and field width
too). Here, the field is 72° - only
moderately wide by astro’ eyepiece standards (which offer up to 110°), but the
zoom maintains it across the whole range – both
unusual and impressive.
Eye
relief measures roughly 13mm from the rim of the eye cup and again seems to
maintain that across the zoom range. For those who view without glasses, the
eye cup twists out and extends.
The
Harpia eyepiece is not all good, though. The field isn’t perfectly corrected.
It is sharp to the edge, but has rather more pin-cushion distortion than I’m
used to in a telescope, presumably to avoid the globe effect when panning. More
of a problem for me is the off-axis false colour, which is quite pronounced in
high-contrast views, even at low power.
Mounting
The Harpia has a
built-in mounting ring. Loosening a lock knob on the right side allows the tube
to rotate and change the eyepiece angle. It rotates smoothly, with click-stops
and a refined weighty feel.
Attached to the ring is a mounting shoe that can function as
a dovetail, but also has a standard ¼ - 20 thread for tripod mounting as an
insert in a 3/8 thread.
I mounted the Harpia 95 on a light Berlebach ash tripod with
a matching head that took the Harpia’s size and weight perfectly and look good
in a domestic setting to compete with Swarovski’s similarly-spec’d ATX Interior
at a slightly lower price.
For serious field use, you might choose a carbon tripod and a
heavier scope-specific head.
I also tried attaching a Tele Vue dovetail adapter to the
Harpia’s shoe via a ¼ - 20 bolt, then mounted it on a Vixen SX2 equatorial
tracking mount for astronomy. By using the rotating tube feature this worked
very well.
The Harpia 95 is
compact enough to fit in a domestic setting.
A dovetail
adapter from Tele Vue allowed the Harpia 95 to be equatorially mounted for
astronomy.
Accessories
The eyepiece comes with a cap on a lanyard and another for
the bayonet. The objective has a push-on cap that’s protective but requires a
very firm squeeze to remove.
No case is provided, but you can buy a quality stay-on case
as an accessory.
In Use – Daytime
Ergonomics
Eyepiece comfort is good with no troublesome blackouts, with
or without specs. I can see all of the field with specs on, but only if I really push my
specs into the eye cup, otherwise I lose a lot of the field.
The
Harpia 95 isn’t quite parfocal across the zoom range. This seems puzzling but
presumably complete parfocality was a step too far for an already-complicated
optical system.
Like the 85mm version, the Harpia 95 is so compact and light
that it’s easy to just pick it up and carry it on a tripod. But, as I pointed
out before, for extreme portability you might choose the Gavia, which is
significantly smaller and lighter still.
The View
The view is typical Zeiss: very bright and with a
cool-yet-natural colour balance that I like; and sharp to the very edge in a
way that Zeiss binoculars are not (see below).
Optical quality of the Harpia 85 I tested was extremely high,
but this Harpia 95 was obviously less so from the first look. Fidelity was
still good, colours vivid, resolution good, but the absolute pin-sharpness and
snap of the 85 wasn’t there. A later star test confirmed that the optics were
slightly out of alignment, though doubtless within tolerances for a spotting
scope. I think you can see this less-than-perfect sharpness in the snap taken
at 70x below.
Brightness is subjectively at binocular levels at low power
(very similar to the 10x32 SFs I was testing at the same time), when the
Harpia’s exit pupil is binocular wide. So, at 23x, I could watch birds
searching through the leaf litter for bugs on the dimly-lit floor of my local
copse on a cloudy day in early spring.
At 70x daytime brightness does drop off, both centre-field
and slightly more at the edges, but less so than with the Harpia 85 – no
surprise, the 95 collects 25% more light, after all.
At 3x zoom (70x magnification), the Harpia 95 has a very
shallow depth of field. The lower optical quality/alignment meant perfect focus
seemed a lot harder to find at 70x than the Harpia 85 had at 65x.
1x zoom - 23x magnification.
3x zoom – 70x magnification.
Flat field?
As I noted
above, the field is sharp edge-to-edge, even at minimum focus distance and
maximum zoom, confirmed by viewing a meter rule 5m away.
There
is, however, quite a bit of pin cushion distortion, probably to allow
comfortable panning. Even so, panning does create some ‘rolling ball’ effect,
more so than the Gavia 85, presumably due to the wider field.
Chromatic Aberration
My
standard test of focusing through branches silhouetted against a bright but
cloudy sky reveals almost zero false colour from the objective, much the same as the Harpia 85, despite the Harpia
95’s marginally faster, bigger lens.
I
usually do this test at 100x, but it’s still impressive at 70x - better than a
doublet apochromat of similar size, with just a slight tinge of green one side,
purple the other.
But
considered as an integrated system with the eyepiece, the Harpia 95 is not as
perfect, again just like the smaller model. There is lateral colour both
off-axis and when moving eye position, sometimes quite a lot.
What does
this mean in practice? Watching a crow in silhouette, at any power, it’s
impossible to avoid some false colour fringing where black feather meets sky.
This Harpia
85 snap reveals the pin-cushion distortion and lateral false colour that the
Harpia 95 suffers too.
In Use – Dusk
The Harpia 95 is bright at lower powers and works well into
dusk, better than the smaller aperture version. You could use it in woodland
even at twilight. Veiling flare under a brilliant dusk sky is a non-issue with
the sun-shade extended.
In Use – Observing the Night Sky
General Observing Notes
Although
the field shows some pincushion distortion for comfier panning by day, stars
remain points until the last few percent when a just a little astigmatism
creeps in at the edge.
Star
testing a spotting scope isn’t really fair. Nonetheless, it did reveal some
misalignment. The Harpia 85 had just a very little, this 95mm version more.
Which part of the optical system was misaligned I couldn’t tell.
The maximum field of 3.4° made finding fainter targets
challenging without a finder, more so than the 85mm version, more so than with
binoculars that share your naked-eye line of sight. Still, even the Harpia 95
is better than the Gavia 85, which has only 1.9° maximum at its lowest power - very
challenging for finding faint DSOs without a finder.
I found focusing a bit difficult at 70x and the image of the
Moon below reflects this (though the seeing was poor too).
On the positive side, the ability to zoom in without swapping
eyepieces turned out to be a great feature for astronomy.
Snap of the Moon taken through the Harpia at 70x with an
iPhone X.
The Moon
A
gibbous Moon just before full was crisp and reasonably sharp at 70x, with only
minor false colour in focus. It was
quite a decent view, but not as sharp and astro’-scope like as the Harpia 85. I
noted viewing the stripes in Aristarchus’ walls, ghostly Reiner Gamma, the
central peak in nearby Marius, the central peak in Pythagoras and giant
Schickard right on the terminator.
Mars
The Red
Planet, right at the end of an opposition period, was the only planet around
and only ~5 arcsecs in apparent size, a challenge for any telescope, it was
only just discernible as a disk at 70x through the Harpia.
Deep Sky
Despite
a maximum field of view of 3.4° at 23x,
the Harpia 95 still frames larger clusters well. The Pleiades fitted in the
field at 23x, but looked less perfectly sparkly than through the smaller model.
Another
famous cluster, the Beehive, showed its main stars, pinpoint to the field edge;
lots of fainter stars at this aperture too.
The
chain of clusters, M35 to M38, running up through Auriga, were properly
resolved into starbursts, likewise the Double Cluster and nearby Stock 2 and
the Owl Cluster, sweeping from Perseus to Cassiopeia.
Zooming
in on big and bright globular cluster in M3 in Boötes (no need to swap out eyepieces) began to resolve the misty ball
into myriads of individual stars.
Castor split
easily, but I failed to split Rigel which depends on a very clean Airy disk at
high power.
The Harpia
95 makes a surprisingly good astronomical telescope for Deep Sky and the Moon,
but it’s greater light gathering power was marred by noticeably poorer optics
on this example than the Harpia 85 I reviewed.
Summary
In many ways the Zeiss Harpia 95 is
just like its smaller sibling but with more reach in low light. The view is
essentially the same – bright and crisp and wide, with vivid but natural
colours (to me at least) and an impressive zoom range. Physically, it’s
surprisingly similar – not much heavier at all and just a little longer and
fatter. So sheer size wouldn’t be a reason to choose the smaller model, but
close focus – a critical metre more distant here – just might, if insects are a
major interest.
The already clever-but-flawed dual
speed focuser worked less well for me than on the Harpia 85, because the optics
were less snappy at high power. The objective-eyepiece system which delivers
that big zoom range and consistently wide, flat field has a bit too much
lateral false colour and pin-cushion, same as the smaller model.
Despite slightly flawed optical quality on this example, the Harpia 95 is a state-of-the-art
scope, capable of almost anything you care to do with it from long-range
microscopy to casual astronomy. Highly recommended.
Buy Zeiss Harpia 95 from Wex here:
