Roof Prism Types

They re more compact and streamlined lighter weight and much easier to carry around than the bulky porro style binos.

Roof prism types.

Now there are a few variations of the roof prism design. Porro prism vs roof prism. Essentially they all maintain the same basic function to keep light waves entering and exiting the binocular in a straight line. Zeiss has famously made a number of a k binos over the years though most roof binos use s p.

There are three main types of roof prism binoculars namely amici schmidt pechan and abbe koenig. The prisms are usually coated to increase reflectivity and to keep the light waves in the right direction. If you see a pair of straight tube binoculars there s a good chance you re looking at a set equipped with roof prisms. The simplest roof prism is the amici roof prism with other common roof prism designs being the abbe koenig prism the schmidt pechan prism and probably the best known being the roof pentaprism pictured here.

These are the more modern of the two types of binoculars. It uses an amici roof followed by a rhomb. The common roof prism binos use either the s p or a k configurations. Binoculars with roof prisms are straighter and more compact.

The only current bino use of the amici roof prism i can think of is the apm apo 90 bt. This is why roof prism binoculars have an aligned eyepiece to objective lens construction.