What kind of binoculars should I buy for looking/watching wildlife & using for general purposes ?
April 30, 2010 by
Filed under Nikon Binoculars
I looked at a pair of Nikon 8 X 40 also some Leupold,Bosh & lomb & cabela’s brand name others 10 X 40 size I just want a great pair to have & use for when I’m outdoors.
I have spent a lot of time looking through binoculars the last few months trying to pick my next pair. I’ve never owned really good binoculars, and after looking through quality glass, I just can’t keep using my old junkers anymore. The clearest and best rated binoculars (at least in my price range) have been the Nikon Monarch 10×42. Leupolds are a very close second.
The Nikon Monarch that Travis mentioned is definitely top notch, look through that and you won’t go back. With binos, you get what you pay for, the Monarch price level is the most saturated price level out there. It’s the $300-$400 price range, another one that I’d recommend near that price range is the Carson XM HD series. They’re comparable to the Monarch’s performance at a slightly cheaper price.
The key to binoculars is to always buy porro design, until you get above the $150 price range. Any roof bino under $150 will be lacking when compared to a similarly priced porro. The monarch and most bino with a 40mm lens are roof binos, these binos have parallel tubes, porros have angled tubes. You see roof binos need phase correction in order for the image to be sharp, phase correction cost money, so cheap roof binos forgo the correction.
Don’t know but they are expensive if you want some really powerful ones. I tried out some good ones that belong to my brother in law and they gave me a headache, so should suggest you don’t get the ones that give a headache. Hope it works out well. I was into watching birds by the way and found some rare ones that weren’t in any bird books.
Both 8×40 and 10×40 are very popular with wildlife viewers. The 8×40 generally have a wider field of view which is very beneficial for trying to find flying birds or birds in branches of trees. 8×40 have less jiggle of the image but not noticeably less magnification. I have both and I can barely tell the difference. Select a pair of roof prism binos as they are water proof and fog proof. You can spend a lot of money on a pair, up to $3000 but generally speaking you get only about 10% improvement in performance for each doubling in price. So somewhere in the $200 to $700 price range is really good performance fore a reasonable price. In the higher price range you generally get locking diopter adjustment, which is something I really like. One of my pairs has it and one does not. The more expensive pairs are marketed mainly to birders, who are always trying to impress other birders with their optics.
Nikon makes some outstanding binoculars, but they are very expensive. I once had a pair.
Among the less expensive but very good pairs are these:
Nikon trailblazer 8×40
http://www.eagleoptics.com/binoculars/nikon/nikon-trailblazer-8×42-atb-binocular
Inexpensive, excellent eye relief if you should ever have to wear glasses, decent field of view but not great, very poor close focus but not too important if you are not interested in dragon flies or butterflies.
Vortex Diamondback is in the same price range but has some advantages. Wider field of view and much closer focus.
http://www.eagleoptics.com/binoculars/vortex/diamondback-8×42-binocular
I do not believe that either of these have locking diopter adjustment though. Another nice feature that some binos have and some do no is twist up eye cups. They are normally found in the more expensive binos.