[Dorian Gray]

Christmas and its commotion is a distant speck on the horizon as far as I'm concerned, but my father has been dropping hints that he'd love to finally get a decent pair of binoculars. So our family members will pool our resources and get him just that for a present. My sister (always a better planner than I) suggested I figure out which ones to get. Hmm. I'm a bit of an optics geek but I can't say I know a lot about binoculars. Maybe someone here does? I know we have a few military types here who might have experience with binoculars.

Anyway, my dad is an outdoors kind of guy in his fifties, a one-time hunter and now more of a casual bird-watcher. He enjoys walking in the forests and wetlands in the nearby countryside. Material to my quest for good binoculars is the fact that he has astonishingly acute long-range vision. He can read signs before most people spot the sign, and identify distant dots in the sky as specific birds. Interestingly, I have much better night vision than he does, but in daylight he can see far better than I. Maybe something to do with the balance of cones and rods?

His excellent vision presumably means that he would benefit from good optical quality. So that's a must. We'd also like the binoculars to be waterproof and reasonably rugged. And they'll sometimes be used in dim light, so we'd like an absolute minimum exit pupil of 4 mm, and preferably more. On the other hand, I don't think he'd place a huge emphasis on really light weight or compact size. But I see that nearly all good binoculars these days are roof-prism designs anyway.

Today I went into a dealer and had a look through some binoculars. These were the ones I tried:

Minox BL 8x42 BR. I liked the look and feel of these, and when I got home and looked them up I discovered that Minox hired Volkswagen-Design to do the design. It shows, though they're not as clean as this model:





Opticron Imagic BGA SE 8x32. Smaller exit pupil due to the smaller objective lenses, but nice binoculars nevertheless. I'd never heard of the brand Opticron, though:





Bushnell Legend 8x42. Rugged-looking rather than pretty, but they feel great in the hands:





I was struck by the fact that all of these had plainly visible chromatic aberration (colour-fringing) despite prices around £300. On the other hand, they were fantastically comfortable to use and look through, due to their large eyepiece lenses and high eye relief.

Any suggestions?

[Boomerangmacuser]

I have a pair of Nikon binoculars that cost about $250 CAD. I don't know too much about them spec-whore wise but the key selling feature was that they were waterproof and nitrogen filled. That's important here on the wet coast as moisture can pretty much wreck them. The nitrogen prevents condensation.

If your dad is going to be out and about in the wet, make sure they're waterproof and filled with some sort of inert gas.

My 2 cents.

[turbulentfurball]

What, did your 142 Safari tabs about binoculars not come up with anything?

[Mugge]

Bwa ha ha ha!!!

[Luca]

I have heard that porro prisms provide a *slightly* brighter image than roof prisms. Of course, all the high end brands seem to use roof prisms instead of porros, for whatever reason. Personally, I don't really see why. They're more compact, yes, but on the other hand they don't provide as much stereo separation, and of course they're more expensive and slightly less bright. Modern multi-coatings pretty much negate the brightness argument, but it's still something to keep in mind.

I have a pair of Celestron 7x50s that I use for astronomy. Ever since I sold my telescope a few years ago, I've used these exclusively for observation. My telescope was simply too big and unwieldy to be worth keeping around (it was an 8" reflector).

Thing is, you can get a really high quality pair of binoculars without having to spend $400 or $500 on a premium brand. Mine are Celestrons. They were $160 if I remember correctly, which is more than your typical pair of Wal-Mart Bushnells, but even that amount will buy you a pretty nice set. I bought them after trying out five or six different pairs at a store in Minnesota called the Telescope Shoppe. I got to try them all out and picked the one with the sharpest image with the least amount of purple fringing. I have never seen purple fringing on mine.

I might recommend a 7x50 pair, also. 50mm binoculars can be kinda large, perhaps unnecessarily so for terrestrial observing, but they do give you a fantastically bright image. The low magnification means less shaking, and the exit pupil is about as large as you can get without it going to waste (an exit pupil of greater than 7mm is pretty much useless, since your pupils can't dilate to get that big).

As for reviews... well, I used to go to a ton of amateur astronomy sites. Astromart.com has tons of discussion on this subject, and a forum full of people who live, eat, and breathe telescopes and binoculars. They also have nice classified postings, but you're going to want to get a new pair.

Really, what made my decision the easiest was my ability to go to a store and try out a bunch of pairs. If not for that, I wouldn't have known what to get.

[curiousuburb]

If your budget supports it, go for the Image Stabilized Canons.

Specs are not as important as usability. I have a lovely (but heavy) pair of Oberwerk 15x70s for astronomical use, but can't really observe too long before my wimpy T-rex arms get fatigued and they require a tripod. Not very portable.

All the Canon reviews and anybody I know who's tried them says the stabilization is effectively like a boost in clarity, since you can handhold a crisp image that otherwise would require a tripod. Ergo, you use them more and get the benefits of stability without carrying extra struts.

bigbinoculars.com and other sites sell plenty of Chinese and Russian gear that is first class quality nowadays... some ex-milspec stuff for surplus prices can be found too. Some great review sites out there.

But my next pair will be stabilized if Santa can afford it.

[Luca]

Ah yes, I forgot about the IS Canons. I read a review of them in Sky and Telescope magazine a few years back and they absolutely loved them. Even the 10x30, which you'd think would be a bit small and dim for astronomical observing, was better than any 50mm binoculars they'd used.

The 8x25 is the cheapest, but it's still around $200. Then there's a 10x30 for about $300, a 12x36 for about $500, a 15x50 for $800, and an 18x50 for $1000. Pretty insane prices, but considering what you get, they might just be worth it.

[Dorian Gray]

Boomerangmacuser: all of the binoculars I mentioned above are waterproof and inert-gas-filled. I agree that's important for real-world usage, especially in wet countries like the UK.

Luca, I own a pair of Minolta "Classic" 7x50 binoculars that I bought years ago for their large exit pupil (and therefore bright image at dawn and dusk), so I know what you're talking about. But they are really big and heavy. So much so that the inconvenience of carrying them often means I leave them at home when I could make use of them.

Originally Posted by curiousuburb If your budget supports it, go for the Image Stabilized Canons.

Well, I tried the Canon 8x25 IS binoculars a couple of days ago. They were incredibly bad. Honestly, I cannot fathom how anyone could justify spending well over £200 on those (that's what they cost here Luca (RRP is £300!); binoculars are priced even worse in the UK than other products, perhaps because of the small market here, where the great majority of people live in cities and have little use for binoculars). Some of the problems I encountered in a quick trial:

• Very large and heavy for the optical dimensions.
• Cheap build quality. The strange mechanism for adjusting the inter-pupil distance is particularly offensive. The focus knob feels cheap and the eyecups are of the tacky fold-down rubber variety.
• Noticeably darker view than other binoculars in this price-range even in broad daylight (cloudy day).
• Lower contrast and "pop" in the image than I saw with all the other binoculars I tried in the shop. Distortion and chromatic aberration also present in abundance. Make no mistake: you're paying for image stabilisation here, not optical quality.
• Very small exit pupil (3.1 mm). This causes poor brightness but it also causes another surprising problem: it's difficult to align one's pupils with the exit pupils from the ocular lenses. They're really fussy with placement. Another related, serious problem: as one scans the field of view, the movement of one's eyeball moves the pupil outside the narrow cylinder of light from the eyepiece, causing the image to go dark. You have to reposition the binoculars just to scan the field!
• Presumably to mitigate the preceding fault, and due to other optical compromises, the binoculars have a fairly poor field of view (6.6 degrees real, 52.8 degrees apparent) for the 8x25 specification. The view is a little like looking down a tunnel. In fairness to Canon, many roof-prism binoculars seem to suffer from tunnel-vision.
• Despite the poor field of view (which I understand usually permits the improvement of other performance characteristics), the eye relief is also relatively poor at 13.5 mm. This adds to the general viewing discomfort that the above problems create.
• They're an ergonomic disaster. Your hands have nowhere to go. Enough said.
• They require batteries.
• They're neither waterproof nor water-resistant. They're probably not very shock-resistance either, though I can't be sure.
• They inspired my brother to talk about making a YouTube video called "When industrial design goes wrong." He reckons they look like they crawled out of a swamp and developed a "rudimentary tail". Judge for yourself:

Perhaps Canon's £1k IS binoculars are worth the cash, but as far as I'm concerned, the 8x25 IS model is hopelessly compromised. I'm not convinced of the value of IS in 8x binoculars either, especially as in the real world you can often find something to support your arms. A tripod is of course better than any IS for quality, but much more cumbersome (though I'd happily take it over living with the above list of faults). My tip if you think you want these binoculars: don't buy them online without checking them out in person.

This is what I'd really like:





Notice this is turning into one of those presents one selfishly buys for oneself. Tomorrow I'm going to a shop that stocks the Nikon Monarch line, which placed 2nd in this interesting comparison.



I also tried out Pentax's DCF line, which were ergonomically good and had fantastically large ocular lenses for great viewing comfort, but were noticeably less sharp than the Opticron Imagic BGA SE 8x32 (which were the sharpest binoculars I've looked through so far). The Pentax binoculars also have "PENTAX" written down one side in huge raised characters, which looks old-fashioned already.

[Dorian Gray]

Well, I tried the Nikon Monarch 8x36 and they are indeed good: optically similar to the Opticron Imagic I tried earlier, though perhaps a tad less solidly built (the eyecups in particular didn't quite have the perfect heft and resistance of the Opticron). But once again, colour-fringing was plainly present! I'm starting to wonder if my eyes are okay. Online reviews don't seem to mention this, but every binocular I've tried has had what I would describe as fairly severe chromatic aberration off-axis (to a degree I'd never accept in a photographic lens, for example). Wish I could get a look through something made by Zeiss or Leica to see if they definitively solve this problem (not that we can remotely afford those).

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that a complex optical system with perhaps 20 elements (~10 each side) should be less than perfect, especially when priced at less than a single camera lens. But I would be surprised if Zeiss, for example, got this wrong in their 56 mm FL line:



Abbe-Koenig prisms are sexy.

[Dorian Gray]

Just ordered the Bushnell Legend 8x42 roof-prism model. From America, baby. The B&H Photo price, including shipping at $50, was almost exactly half the UK price. Praise be to the dollar-pound exchange rate. There will be customs duties and VAT to pay, at 4.5% and 17.5% respectively, calculated cumulatively, and possibly another fee I've overlooked, but the price should still be under £200 rather than almost £300.

We chose the Bushnell model in the end partly because the US-UK price disparity is even greater than usual in the case of Bushnell binoculars, perhaps because Bushnell is an American brand. The Legend binocular also seems a good choice for my father, due to its thick rubber armour and magnesium-alloy body (rare in this price range: most are polycarbonate). Water-proof, fog-proof (nitrogen-purged), shock-proof, etc. The poor thing will probably spend a good bit of its life on the floor of the car, and my dad doesn't really appreciate the delicacy of precision optics, so the tougher the better.

Incidentally, the quality of the B&H online shopping experience was the best I've ever had. Those guys really know how to run a shop. They only got the shipping destination of Northern Ireland wrong (it was listed as "North Ireland").

[Luca]

Sounds like a good choice. Bushnell is geared towards hunters and other sporting enthusiasts. I've always been suspicious of them since their lowest end products really scrape the bottom of the barrel in terms of price and quality, but I guess their higher end binoculars are probably worth the asking price. Their $20 ones, on the other hand, are not.

[Dorian Gray]

Yes, their products cover the whole spectrum from cheap rubbish to really very good products made in the same Japanese factory as some other high-end binoculars. Here's a PDF catalogue. Optically, the model I chose is neither significantly better nor worse than the competing models in this price range. But it feels like it might take a bit more abuse than the Minox (which is geared towards light weight), and the very low B&H Photo price for this particular model made it a smart choice once I'd made the decision to buy from the US. I wouldn't have saved anything by buying Minox or a couple of other brands at B&H (and Opticron doesn't seem to be available in the US).

I would probably not choose the Bushnell Legend for myself, but alas, it's not my present.

By the way, I tried the £1100 Swarovski 8.5x42 EL in a high-street shop, and they too had visible (though less) chromatic aberration! Perhaps my photographic experience makes me more sensitive to this than most. They were otherwise extremely nice binoculars. Why don't all roof-prism binoculars have that open-bridge design? It's much better ergonomically.

[Dorian Gray]

Cool: might arrive on Monday if I understand American date notation correctly.

[DMBand0026]

You crazy Brits are the ones who have it all messed up! You guys and your adding of the letter "u" to words that clearly don't need it.

[Dorian Gray]

They did indeed arrive on Monday. Unless I get a rude shock with the forthcoming customs charges, I'll be buying stuff online from the US again. Big savings and next-to-no hassle.

And without further ado (excuse the messed-up colours from our energy-saving bulbs and my haste):







The binocular feels very solid in the hand, totally unlike binoculars under £100. I checked the alignment of the barrels and they are absolutely spot-on, unlike every cheap pair of binoculars I've ever looked through. The sharpness of the image is also a new experience for me. And a big surprise: in deep darkness, long after sunset, when I assume my pupils have dilated as far as they are going to, the Legend 8x42 is actually slightly brighter than my Minolta 7x50. Make of that what you will.

I'm sure my dad will love this!

[Windswept]

Ahhh, another satisfied customer, for quality products and service from the good ol' US of A.

And yeah, that's December 10, 2007... as in: 12/10/2007.

Nice and logical, right?