MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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I've always fancied a pair of binoculars for when I'm in the hills. Seeing as my birthday is coming up, now is a good time to work out what would be good.
All I'm looking for is something to survive walking/biking around Scotland (mostly), reasonably small and the cheaper the better. Ideas please!
MrsJulianA's 10x42 Bushnell Powerviews are pretty good and fairly small.
Assume you know what the numbers all are and how also how they affect the light-gathering capabilities?
lidl have some in at the moment, dont know much about them , but i bet they're cheap
lidl ones are 10x50 for 14.99, seems a bargain tbh
Or you could pay £900+ for some Leica's, I bet there's hardly any difference.
I got some off Fleabay for about £15, just to keep in the car, but TBH they'r absolutely CRAAAP (compared to my 10x50 Optolyth Alpins wot I've had for 30 years)
You gets wot you pays for.
ahah, window watcher eh......... 😉
JulianA -- I'm a newbie to this, so no, I don't know what the numbers mean. I've [url= http://www.chuckhawks.com/binocular_basics.htm ]just read about binocular basics[/url], but feel free to point out anything obvious I should take into consideration.
the hustler -- those may well do, but I don't see them online.
ton -- I was waiting for that... You're as bad as my girlfriend!
The best minis I have used are the Leica 8 x 20BR, not cheap though, but very nice to use.
Mid size, worth looking at the Swift 8x42 Ultra Lite Roof Binocular, my Mrs picked up a pair in the States and she loves them.
Remember, its something you should try before you buy.
I second the mini Leica. The image is so much brighter than you'll get with cheaper stuff, worth every penny. Great at rugby & cricket matches too
@ml - that site seems to give a fair amount of info.
Only skim-read it, but not sure whether it points this out: if you divide the smaller number into the larger number, you can use the result as a kind of 'brightness index' (the higher the better).
Thus MrsJA's 10x42s have a 'brightness index' of 4.2 but my 10x50s have a 'brightness index' of five, therefore the image that I see should be around 20% brighter.
Having said which, MrsJA's binos are excellent and do offer a slight weight saving - you pays your money and you takes your choice. We paid around £100 each for ours, but we're fairly serious about our birdwatching and like a reasonable image (and NEED to go and buy a telescope!).
Good luck - you'll just have to make the trade-off between image brightness, image quality, weight, magnification and price!
Dont overlook the Aldi/Lidl ones, all the birdwatcher forums rave about them, got my Dad some for Christmas from Aldi and they are fantastic. As good as ones costing £60-80 apparently. The Aldi ones are Bresser 10x50. They also had a compact set but didnt look at them as my Dad wanted large ones.