Binoculars - Which Out Of These 3? Opinions Please

[rjmartin]

Hi Guys & Girls,

I know this is a camera forum however a fair few of you seem to know something about binoculars, where as I am pretty new to them! Anyway with my tight budget (I'm a student) I have been able to shortlist 3 possible choices of binocular and I just wondered which (if any) you would choose as a first binocular and why.

First - Nikon Action 8x40

Second - Olympus 8-16 x 40

Third - Bushnell H2O 8 x 42

Many Thanks for your advice, it is appreciated

Cheers, Rob

 

[EMA747]

I have some Nikon ones similar to those in the link you posted. They are good for the money imo. My old man has some very nice Opticron ones but they cost about £250. They are a lot sharper than mine.

Go and test them in a shop if you can I would suggest.

 

[arclight]

I'd go for the Nikon.
The Bushnell review mentioning solid eyecups and lens caps that fitted poorly put me off.

Olympus 8-16X magnification.

16X is too strong to handhold effectively and the image will not be very bright at that end of the scale.
I always think that zoom in bincs is a bit of a gimmick.

 

[Tringa]

Agree with Arclight 16x mag is way too high to handhold. There is always a temptation, which advertising can play on, to go for high magnification and although it depends on the individual, about 10x is the maximum most can hold still easily.

One of the important factors with binoculars is the exit pupil. This is the diameter of the circle of light leaving the binoculars and entering your eye. Divide the second on the two numbers used to describe bins by the first to get the EP. So the 8X40 have an exit pupil of 5mm.

In bright light the pupil of your eye is probably less than 5mm so the bins are providing plenty of light. In darker conditions the pupil of the eye can be larger than the exit pupil of the binoculars.

Looking at the top magnification of the Olympus binoculars, the exit pupil is 2.5mm which means, even if they could be held steady, a fairly dim image. As the amount of light is determined by the area a 2.5mm exit pupil is delivering 4times less light than 5mm.

The way to overcome this is to make the object lens bigger. To get an exit pupil of 5 with 16x magnification you would need the binoculars to be 16X80. Nice and bright and with high magnification but they would be so heavy that even carrying them would be a pain.

8X40s are good all round binoculars and both of those brands are well liked, but it would be best if you can try some out.

I have just bought these http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=777_8&products_id=107160

I am not suggesting they are anywhere near as good as either of the Nikons or the Bushnells - they are not. There is loss of definition at the edges, but for just short of £20 they are not bad.

Dave

 

[hollis_f]

Knocking the zoom bins on the head straight away (sounds good on paper - quality is never good) it really boils down to a choice between porro and roof prism design. The Nikons are a porro design, the traditional (old-fashioned?) design of bins where the light obviously follows a zig-zag path. The additional separation of the objectives can give a better 3D 'feel' to the image, but they do tend to be bulkier than the roof prism design, like the Bushnells. See here for more explanation.

Personally, if you can afford a few extra beer tokens, I'd go for these.