Advice on binoculars

Bigvin

Bigvin

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When I'm out and about shooting wildlife and my wife is tagging along, she's decided she'd like a set of binoculars so she can see what i'm taking pictures of.

Budget is around the £100 mark.

I don't know anything about bino's so any advice or recommendations would be helpful.

From the little research I've done i'm thinking a max magnification of 8x will do, but i'm not quite sure what size lens she'll want for birds. 40, 42, 50??? or would a smaller compact set of bino's be ok?

Cheers Lee
 
If you're sure it's just what you're photographing is all they'll be used for then a compact set will be fine, assuming you do your thing in daylight.

The lens size is all about light gathering, which comes into its own in poor light conditions. It can sort of be related to the magnification in what's called the exit pupil.. This is the diameter of the column of light leaving the eyepiece and entering the eye. It's the lens diameter divided by the magnification, and is significant when used in low light or at night. The iris of a young to middle-aged person has a maximum diameter of around seven millimetres, so an exit pupil of that size will give the brightest possible image as it's using all of the eye's light gathering ability. 7x50 or 8x50 are pretty close to this.

If they're being used only in daylight, the eye's iris will be stopped down so a smaller front lens can be used since a smaller exit pupil of around 3-4 mm can be used, such as 8x25 or 8x30. These smaller bins have the great advantage of being able to fit in a pocket and also of lightness. It's not worth going much above eight times magnification for hand held use as they will be difficult to hold still enough to be of any use.
 
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I would suggest going along to a shop that sells them and get her to try them out.....
 
Thanks for the replies

She's decided that she's looking at some 8x40'ish bino's.

There isn't many places around here that sell binoculars in any volume where you can go and try different ones.

She had seen those Nikon ones Straycat, liked them cos they were the same make as my camera. Lol.
 
I've no idea where you live Bigvin but I was at a RSPB reserve the other day that happened to have a shop on site. They had loads of binoculars for sale which could be tried out.

Just a thought if your limited for high street shops.
 
Anything from Opticron and you cant go wrong. I've a pair of the discovery bins for the car and they are an excellent bin for the price.

Gerard.
 
Probably a silly question, and sorry to butt in, but can you get IS on binoculars? Might be handy :p
 
postcardcv said:
Be warned that the Canon IS range is vary variable - some of the models are excellent (the 10x42 L springs to mind) whereas others are depressingly bad (the 8x25 really should be avoided). If you want one with decent optics, a good IS system but not a huge price ticket then look at the 12x36 model.
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Perhaps? but at about 5 X the op's budget :thinking:
 
Splog said:
Perhaps? but at about 5 X the op's budget :thinking:
Click to expand...

indeed, but as it was in answer to another posters question I didn't think I'd worry... I've already made my suggestion to the OP, with a budget of sub £100 I'd take the Opticron 8x32 Oregons every time. They are well made, compact and deliver a very good image for the money (they are better than a lot of other bins at twice the price). Looking the 8x42 Oregon is now just under £100 http://www.cleyspy.co.uk/oregon-8x42-i1996.html though personally I would go for the 8x32 as in my experience it is optically better than the 8x42.
 
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postcardcv said:
If you want one with decent optics, a good IS system but not a huge price ticket then look at the 12x36 model.
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Or the 10x30s @ £300ish. We have both. I bought the 10x30s as a second set for Ms arad85 as our eyes are different and we needed to keep adjusting the eyepiece on the 12x36s to get focus.

Once you've used an IS pair of binos you never want to look through anything else - assuming you're not grappling for every photon at dawn/dusk where a larger objective lens might be more important.
 
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