Binoculars are a very personal thing. What conditions will you be
using them in? Bad light in rainforest or at dawn & dusk? And if so
how often? Most birders very seldom experience poor light. Lots of
dust? Again not very often. Lots of pelagic trips where they might
get salty? Again probably not often. So unless you are an extreme
birder, I doubt that you would need top of the range binoculars
(Leica, Zeiss, Swarovski).
I would recommend that you test a pair of Nikon Monarchs. Then work
up or down from there depending on price, weight, balance and feel,
how serious and full on a birder you are, etc.
I currently have a pair of 10x42 Leica, but my neck is starting to
complain and I often take them off when I am travelling rather than
having them ready to go. My next step is to use a harness. But
maybe I should be looking at a pair of 8x35 or 8x32 which are much
lighter. I would not recommend using 10x magnification in the
smaller size. The field of view is too small.
Close focussing is useful, but as others have said probably not for
birds. I like close focus to look at reptiles, butterflies, frogs,
etc from a close distance.
I know almost nothing about the lower price scopes. Go to a shop and
try out whatever they have. Again, think about what you want to use
a scope for. Seawatching? Waders? Open water or country? For
seawatching, you probably would need a better quality scope as it is
useful to wind up the magnification, and the better scopes have less
distortion. For waders, it depends on how much heat haze, etc that
you would normally experience. You can usually avoid the worst times
of day, or position yourself to make the light better. For open
country birding, any scope would probably do. I personally prefer a
20x60 zoom lens, but others swear by a 32x wide angle lens. Again,
your choice. Other people have mentioned tripods. These can be
relatively expensive, and are often heavy. I used to think that I
needed a very sturdy tripod to counteract bad conditions (e.g. wind),
but I now find it is much better to sit yourself low and keep your
tripod and scope as low to the ground as you can. Your other choice
is a straight lens or an angled lens. Again personal choice. It
doesn't take long to get used to an angled lens. I have chosen an
angled lens as my tripod doesn't go high enough without winding it
up, and I find it more comfortable with the angled lens rather than
stooping a bit. I can also use it by resting it on my drivers window
(fill a bag with some sand to rest it on to keep it stable).
I have dealt with Bintel online and they were excellent. But as Tony
Russell said, I bought my last binoculars online through Adelaide
Optics as their price was significantly less than anyone else and
they are located in Australia. I haven't tried ordering from
overseas. But each time I knew what I wanted, so I was just looking
for the best price and delivery.
_________________________________________________________________
Frank O'Connor Birding WA http://birdingwa.iinet.net.au
Phone : (08) 9386 5694 Email :
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