Buying binoculars

With the huge choice available, so many specifications and such a wide range of prices buying binoculars can be quite tricky. Not only do you need to be sure you are buying binoculars that will do what you want them to do you also need to select binoculars that are right for you.

When using binoculars, particularly over extended periods people can suffer from a wide range of discomforts, purely by buying binoculars that aren’t quite suited to them, by buying binoculars that aren't right for the application or from misusing binoculars. Discomforts experienced include headaches, neck pain and eyestrain to name but a few.

When you are buying binoculars for the first time you probably don’t want to look at the top end of the market especially if they are for a hobby that you are just trying out. Your best bet is to look at binoculars that are reasonably priced with good but not top performance. Too cheap and it might impair the enjoyment of your hobby and if you go too expensive you could find that the binoculars don't get sufficient use to justify the expense.

Just to make your search for binoculars easier try and narrow your requirements before you start. Do you want pocket size, lightweight, standard or night vision binoculars or do you fancy digital (built in camera) binoculars. Like camera’s, binoculars are getting smaller and smaller so when buying binoculars I personally prefer the weight and size of the more compact models.

Once you’ve decided what type of binoculars you want to buy you can do a lot of searching online, it’s convenient and generally the prices are better.

So you’ve decided which type and now it’s time to start searching. Firstly check out the magnification, too low and you don’t get to see what you want to see and too high and you could loose clarity. For bird watching you really want a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 10. If you a buying binoculars for very distant viewing then you really need to go for the more powerful magnification. The downside of going for binoculars with greater magnification is that you really want to start thinking about buying a tripod (movement in the hand can start to blur the image).

In low light conditions you want to look at buying binoculars with bigger lenses which will push up the price and probably the weight of the binoculars. For example 8x50 binoculars have bigger lenses than 8x42. The ‘50’ and the ‘42’ is the size of the lens and the ‘8’ is the magnification.

The distance between the binocular lens and your eye is another important thing to check when buying binoculars. Eye piece hoods give you greater flexibility for eye relief and come in really handy if you wear spectacles.

Also check out the coating on the lens when buying binoculars. Coated lenses improve the light transmission which makes the image brighter and an anti UV coating helps protect your eyes. The better the quality of the binocular the better the coating with the top of the range being fully-multi-coated.

One final tip for buying binoculars is make sure that if you are an all weather kind of person you make sure that the binoculars you choose are waterproof.

Canon Binoculars / Nikon Binoculars / Celestron Binoculars / Pentax Binoculars / Olympus Binoculars / Bushnell Binoculars / Swarovski Binoculars / Steiner Binoculars

Waterproof Binoculars /  Marine Binoculars /Bird Watching Binoculars / Astronomy Binoculars / Digital Binoculars / IS Binoculars / Compact Binoculars / Zoom Binoculars