Now that I have my new telescope, the next thing I am looking to buy is a good pair of binoculars for bird watching. I have a very old pair but I don't think they are high-quality and I have no idea what magnification they are.

What I want to know is, what should I be looking for in a pair of binoculars? Is it simply magnification? Or should I be looking for specific brands that are known for their quality?

Binoculars are similar to telescopes in many ways. On the whole you get what you pay for as the more expensive binocs will (usually) have better optics, better alignment and better coatings.

All binoculars have a pair of numbers of the form 8x50, the first number is the magnification and the second is the lens size. Some binoculars have coated lens, which is the same principle as coated glasses lens. With un-coated lens, some of the light is lost due to reflection while with coated lens all the light passes through to the observer.

You should also take into account whether you wear glasses as you will then need binoculars that have retractable eyecups.

Hope that helps!

Then there's always the modern binoculars which stabilise for those of us who aren't quite as steady as we used to be.


They are considerably more expensive, and I have not used them personally, but I have read many good reviews of them in the last few years. There were not such good reviews when they first came out, but it appears that most of the problems have been sorted out.

Kingfisher

Don't even consider image stabilised binoculars for birding. I work in a specialist optical supplier and we have stopped selling them. Customers were returning them complaining of nausea. When following a moving object, the eyes and semi-circular canals work in conjunction. By using IS bins, some of the movement is removed and the coordination between eye and ear is reduced, hence the nauseous feelings.

When buying binoculars, too many people get wound up by magnification, thinking that the higher the mag the more they'll see, but for birding an 8x or 10x is plenty, in fact, I find that 10x is too much, as I can't hold them still enough. Modern 32 objective bins perform so closely to 42s that it's not worth carrying the extra weight of the 42. My own preference is for the Swarovski 8x32 EL, not cheap, but they out perform anything else on the market!

This post was last modified: 24-04-2007 09:19 AM by wild canon.

Thanks for the advice wild canon, I was thinking about looking into buying some self-stabilising binos because I'd heard about them before, but I'm more suspectible to motion-type sickness than most so it probably wouldn't be a good idea for me to try them.

That is most interesting, wild canon! I don't remember reading anything about that either. I shall go take another look. I do not have any problem with my inner ears at the moment, but I'm reasonably young still. My husband has a brother who also used to work with cameras and binoculars (he repaired them), and it would have been interesting to hear his experiences had he kept on in that profession. Alas, he got out of the repair business around ten years ago, as his eyes were failing...

Kingfisher