Info about Binoculars
Binoculars Made Simple, aka, Binoculars for Beginners
Binoculars are the second optical device used worldwide (glasses are the first), thus binoculars have many uses. Some of these usages include but are not limited to astronomical viewing, bird watching, hunting, photo shooting, and many more. Since binoculars are used for many different things, they come in many different shapes, and sizes, thus, choosing the correct one for your activity can be a little daunting and confusing. This is mainly due to the large numbers and specifications you need to choose from when buying any type of binocular, especially if you are going to buy your first binocular. Therefore, today we are going to take a brief look at binoculars and explain a few things you need to know to make binoculars easier to understand and buy.
The first thing you need to know about binoculars is how they are labeled. This is usually done with two or three numbers. (Binoculars with three numbers are known as zoom binoculars.) The first number is the amount of times the binocular will enlarge an image, in other words, the magnification. In zoom binoculars the first two numbers will tell you how much an image is magnified. When looking at these numbers, more is not always better. Why? The higher the number the more the image brightness, field of view, and image steadiness goes down. In other words, the higher the number, the less steady the picture will look. The second number in binoculars represents the width of the front lens. This means that the larger the second number, the bigger and heavier the binocular. When it comes to choosing the second number, the bigger the better. In other words, the second number directly affects performance, thus the bigger the number the brighter and sharper the image.
The second thing you need to know about binoculars is how much territory you will see when looking through the binoculars, in other words the field of view. In binoculars the field of view is determined by two things, magnification and eyepiece design. The higher the magnification the lower the field of view and the less detail you will see. Like magnification, eyepieces are also easy to understand. Why? Expensive eyepieces (wide-angle eyepiece designs) are much better than inexpensive eyepieces (angel eyepiece design).
The last thing you need to know is eye relief in a binocular. Eye relief, is the distance you need to be from the eyepiece and still have an entire field of view. The general distant you need to be from your eyepiece is fourteen or fifteen millimeters, however, this number may change if you wear glasses and on the type of glasses you are wearing.
Although there are other things you need to keep in mind when choosing/buying binoculars, such as pupil, relative brightness, twilight factor, prism porro, and lens coating, if you carefully choose the first/second number and the field of view your first binocular should be close to perfection. It is also important to keep in mind that if you are buying your first binocular, you may want to keep things as simple as possible.