No, Photoshop is Not "real life", Dave

Dave Pogue today reviews the Bushnell binoculars, and just can't figure out why they're so blurry. So I told him "it's obvious". Here's why for the rest of you...:
1. They didn't bother to adjust the focal plane focus of the sensor to coincide with the same focal point of the binocular eyepiece (e.g. a mfr defect).
2. To confirm this, adjust the binoculars slightly out of focus and take shots - I bet you'll find that it gets better if it is not fixed focus.
3. If it doesn't change at all, that means they have a fixed focus, and that the focus is set wrong. This is not adjustable by the user easily, but if you disassemble the binoculars and adjust the focus manually, you'd correct this problem.

But wait - there's more. I have a long list of errata on digital cameras, most recently the Canon SD200-300 on-camera editing issues, for example, discovered by us at ExecProducer over the course of handling production issues. So I'm quite familiar with these and other annoying issues (light level problems, for example, and resolution issues) and how to find the best way of handling them. So another nit with Dave is a very basic one - using photoshop is not "real life", as anyone in serious astrophotography will tell you.

Precision is expected in using binoculars and digital photography. Even with photoshop the auto levels command often undersaturates. In other words, you can't rely on photoshop to correct the other issues. Too much information is lost. You've got to deal with the problem directly - the focus.

So you might ask, "Why do I know about this stuff and why should it matter"? As to this knowledge - it comes not only from digital production but also from experience in imaging circles in astronomy. For example, anyone could see on this particular photo that you didn't have a pixelation problem, so the rest is obvious - that is, if you take images through a telescope and don't mind taking apart your optics. :-)

It does help that my son Ben won 2nd place at the Synopsys Science and Technology Championship last year with The Perfect Eye: A Study in Collimation, a discussion of collimation techniques using his telescope - he took it apart to defocus and refocus. My daughter plans to begin her science fair career with a discussion of aperture and Dawes limit using a variety of different instruments - she's only 10 but she's demonstrated telescope techniques at Stanford Tech Trek. So it's also a long-standing family interest. Even a child can do it. You can too.