Malaysia Watch Forum
Main Forums => General Discussion - Modern Watches => Topic started by: Loupe System on July 10, 2013, 03:19:01 PM
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Hello everyone.
Some of you recently had the opportunity of seeing and using our loupes during the presentation of Peter Speake-Marin's wonderful watches. What you may not know, is that I am a long-standing watch collector and watch-forum moderator myself, and that there is a bit of a story behind the creation of our loupes... :)
In fact, Loupe System was born out of my personal quest to find a very high quality portable loupe to use to admire my own watch collection, as well as the watches which I was being shown in stores and watch fairs.
Most loupes, such as the ones you may have been given by watch brands before, just use a single optical element to provide magnification. While these loupes are often pretty and very light, they provide a good image only in the center of the viewing field: along the edges, you will inevitably see both chromatic aberration (i.e. diffraction, or color shift) and image distortion (i.e. the image becoming unfocused and/or straight lines appearing significantly curved).
These effects can be corrected in part by using additional optical elements in the loupe’s design. Some loupes, called “doublets”, aim to correct the chromatic aberration by using two optical elements glued together. These are made of two different types of glass, shaped so that the chromatic aberration of one is counterbalanced by that of the other. While this improves things, it still leaves significant image distortion at the edges of the viewing field. This is why other loupes, in this case called “triplets”, add a third optical element to this design to attempt to correct the distortion as well.
However, even the very best of them are rarely perfect (e.g. the Carl Zeiss Triotar T* Loupe 5X, once made by Contax with Zeiss optics to examine 35mm slides - which one day I was *finally* able to buy, only to find out that it was not as good as the ones I had made - what a disappointment!!!), and will always show at least some amount of optical aberration at the edges of the viewing field.
Not surprisingly, certain types of camera optics, if designed with the right focusing distance and optical layout, can also function as loupes. This is how, when I finally realized that I was unable to find a loupe which would meet my high standards, I ended up making our own!
I used a professional optical system for a camera from the early '80s, which was made of five optical elements arranged in three groups. You may think of it as a standard loupe with two doublets mounted above and below it, which are specifically designed to correct the image enlarged by the central element. Once modified, that optical system provided me with a clear 40mm-wide viewing field with 6x magnification, free from most chromatic aberration and image distortion.
Some of my friends saw this loupe during the various Basel and SIHH shows I attended with it, and kept asking me to make one for them as well. So eventually I ended up scouring eBay to find some more of those camera optics, and modifying them on my kitchen table to make a few more loupes, which I took with me to the Basel watch fair in '12. Much to my surprise, in a matter of hours, they were all sold out to people like Philippe Dufour, Laurent Ferrier, Romain Gauthier, Bart & Tim Grönefeld, Stepan Sarpaneva, Roger Smith, Andreas Strehler, Kari Voutilainen and so on!!! :o
This is how those first 32 hand-made loupes which I sold that day became the inspiration for the development of our current Model 01 loupe... ;D
Glad to answer any questions you might have!
Alberto
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Can you post some pics of your initial design or loupes that you sold?
Would love to see how it evolved to the product we see today.
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I do not have one of the loupe by itself at hand, but here is one which Ernie Romers took of Bart Grönefeld at the SalonQP last year using one of my first, hand-made loupes:
(https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-2mnpKhpX18s/UJ1BjVKlbiI/AAAAAAAAlsc/qeQT4u2bnhE/s800/DSC_0192.JPG)
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u must be an engineer by profession
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LOL, actually no! Finance at uni, IT by trade, and I had to learn about optics to do this... :)
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I like your website layout with big font and crisp photos on the loupe :thumbsup:
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Coincidentally was using the loupe to view a Grönefeld piece that a member brought that day.
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Interesting post. I have a good quality Carl Zeiss 10x jeweller's loupe that suffers from some of the weaknesses mentioned. But it costs only a fraction of the prices of these hand-made ones. Perhaps one day when production of these loupes is commercialized on a wider scale, they might be more affordable to some of us! ;D
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Actually, the hand-made ones were only the very first ones - the process now is more industrialized, though there is still a lot of manuality involved. The cost of the loupes is directly related to the cost of grinding, multi-coating and doing a precision assembly of 5 premium-grade optical glass lenses. These lenses are cut with the precision of a camera lens, and offer an optical resolution which is over 3 times that of the human eye.
Unfortunately, I am afraid that the prices will not be able to get lower than this, but may actually end up increasing if we abandon the direct sales model and go for a distribution and store sales model...
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I like your website layout with big font and crisp photos on the loupe :thumbsup:
Thanks! Designed it myself, and took the pictures too...
(http://a.lber.to/LoupeSystemSmileyLarge.png)
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Amazing work!
How much will one of these super-loupes set back a working Joe such as myself?
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Amazing work!
How much will one of these super-loupes set back a working Joe such as myself?
Google Loupe System.. a very efficient website featuring all his beautiful professional products, very desirable, with upcoming modular system.
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Pricing is surprisingly reasonable. It's a beautiful product.
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Looks lovely and only wish the prices were in RM instead of USD :(
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Looks lovely and only wish the prices were in RM instead of USD :(
Second that!! Tho there's an opinion that the pricing is "surprisingly reasonable"... perhaps in jest?? ::)
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Not in jest at all. These aren't cheap - certainly above my pay grade - but have you looked at the prices of high quality lenses?
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Looks lovely and only wish the prices were in RM instead of USD :(
Second that!! Tho there's an opinion that the pricing is "surprisingly reasonable"... perhaps in jest?? ::)
Our Model 01 is much closer to a camera lens than to a loupe, and unfortunately, high quality, large-diameter lenses in premium-grade optical glass are very expensive to grind precisely, multi-coat individually, and then assemble accurately. A lot of the price you pay is actually the manufacturing cost of the optics.
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this the same one that was featured on hodinkee a couple weeks back?
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Yes
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I think the price is appropriate given the explanation by Loupe System. Although I have not tried it, but may be game to consider it. Anyone keen on group order? Maybe a special price from Loupe System?
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If we can get a bulk group discount, I'll consider.
I think the price is appropriate given the explanation by Loupe System. Although I have not tried it, but may be game to consider it. Anyone keen on group order? Maybe a special price from Loupe System?
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If we can get a bulk group discount, I'll consider.
I think the price is appropriate given the explanation by Loupe System. Although I have not tried it, but may be game to consider it. Anyone keen on group order? Maybe a special price from Loupe System?
Me too. Although the discount would have to be in the order of the aforementioned dollar-to-ringgit conversion.
Yep. I'm poor :(
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If there's a special price for group buy, I might be interested.
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I'm in too if there's a group buy.
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I am interested too. But I would like to know what's the progress of the illumination module.
Fong
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Well, given the level of interest, let me pm loupe system to find out.
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I am interested too. But I would like to know what's the progress of the illumination module.
We are beginning to prototype various approaches for the illumination system. I attach a couple of pictures of one of our first tests:
(https://securecdn.disqus.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/532/6476/original.jpg)
(https://securecdn.disqus.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/532/6477/original.jpg)
This accessory will be launched after the iPhone mounts, so most likely at some point next year. All our loupes will be compatible with it.
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The lighted loupe reminds me of the 20 years old high quality Nikon micro-lens I used to see, for taking close-ups. Certainly better designed than the cheaper LED-mounted loupes.. expect to pay top dollars for top value! :o
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Cool beans. Color me interested. Let me know if there is a MWF purchase.
Fong
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Any ballpark figure at least?
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Hello, not at this stage. The price will really depend on the manufacturing costs, knowing that the idea is to replace the middle element of the loupe with one including the lighting system, and that the system will offer white light, UV light, or combined white and UV light, adjustable brightness, inductive charging, and a custom-shaped rechargeable battery.
We will do all we can to keep the price as low as possible...