Binoculars - maybe O/T?

[nelly111s]

I'm after a smallish, decent pair of binoculars. This forum seemed the most appropriate, given the number of wildlife shots. Anyone any recommendations? I've not a clue - only the wife wants a decent set.

Thanks

Nelly

[tog]

Leica binoculars are the best by a country mile, but they cost accordingly. Never look though a pair in the shop unless you can afford them, as anything else won't do once you've seen what's possible! A set of 10x25 are small and fairly powerful, about £300 for Leica or from about £70 upwards for something half decent from other makers.

[CVP]

You need to be wary of the magnification too, you should be able to hand hold 8* and possibly 10*, anything over this and you may have too much magnification and have trouble holding them steady. Also be aware of the second number given (20, 42 etc) this gives the size of the diameter of the objective lens. A small number gives a nice compact pair of bins but a larger number means a larger lens and hence letting more light in which is nice when it is more overcast.

Leica are ace but very expensive. The Nikons are nice and slightly cheaper. Another brand to try is Swarovski, we have a pair and lots of birders use their binos and scopes.
A good devleopment is Canon who have introduced the image stabilisation technology into binoculars, these sound very interesting and are from £199 upwards.

Chris

[VxDuncan]

Don't know what happened to my post - so here goes again. I'd seriously consider a £9.99 pair of Bresser binos from Lidl. They are made by Meade, one of the most respected telescope manufacturers (in fact mine were from lidl and ARE meade branded, but otherwise identical). They are really popular on the astronomy forums as they are nice and bright (10x50), yet also good quality. DOwn side is the are quite large as they are a tradtional pentprism design, and you may find they've sold out in minutes. Whenever they come round on the lidl specials they sell out instantly to astronomers as they're sucha bargain (worth at least 50-60 quid in a shop). You also get ebay speculators buying them up and selling at a 400% profit so get in early on monday!

Lidl:
www.lidl.co.uk/uk/home.nsf/pages/c.o.20070423.p.Binoculars.ar3
Ebay speculator:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MEADE-BRESSER-B
Similar on amazon:
www.amazon.co.uk/Bresser-10x50-Corvette-Porro-Binoculars/dp/B0007TY0Y6/ref=sr_1_3/203-1690331-1342341?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1176843637&sr=8-3

[Strangely Brown]

tog said:

Leica binoculars are the best by a country mile, but they cost accordingly. Never look though a pair in the shop unless you can afford them, as anything else won't do once you've seen what's possible! A set of 10x25 are small and fairly powerful, about £300 for Leica or from about £70 upwards for something half decent from other makers.

What fortunate timing...

The nice Kiwi gentleman fitting some windows in my house today is apparently a very keen twitcher / general wildlife watcher and we got talking about binoculars and what's the best buy on the market.

He currently has a pair of Leica 10x42 and rates them as absolutely superb. Says that he paid around £700 several years ago and wouldn't change them.

That said, if he had to do it over again he wouldn't buy Leica again, not since he has seen what Swarovski are like. He tried a pair of their binoculars on the strength of being so impressed with the spotting scope that he has. His opinion was that they are far and away a different league to his Leicas, which are bloody good. He added that it's not something that you can see on paper but only by picking them up and using them and more or less confirmed exactly what an earlier post said... beware of going to try them unless you can afford them because you won't want to buy anything less afterwards.

www.swarovskioptik.at/

[Don]

I got a set of Canon Image Stabilising binocs.

www.amazon.co.uk/Canon-10X30IS-Image-Stabilising-Binoculars/dp/B00006CXPE/ref=sr_1_10/203-7632633-0997507?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1176881183&sr=1-10

Absolutely brilliant. Discontinued now but there are others in the range £250 to £'000s.

When you push the button that fires up the battery operated gyros and the image suddenly becomes steady and clear you know why you spent the extra. When the batteries run out they're still a perfectly good set of binocs...but the IS function is simply fantastic.

[nelly111s]

Hmmm - a tenner or more than 200 quid! I showed my wife the post and replies. She says she's got a decent set, but wants a pair of binoculars

Not sure what to buy now but may have a look at the Canon IS ones.

Thanks for the help