With Optics always buy the best you can afford , there are great Bins around the £300 mark from Hawke etc but below that ,I find they are all pretty much the same , they are OK , but if your seriously going to birding day in day out , you may as well save and get a top end optic. There is a reason people in general use Swarovski / Zeiss etc Its not snobbery in any way , I've never been rich money wise, but always in the main have used Zeiss . If they cost £1600 to start with 10 years later, I've been out birding with them ,probably 3000+ times and have had new front and rear lenses free of charge in that time , so they really owe me nothing.
More expensive optics , in general have better glass and engineering. The lenses are kept in place with brackets and screws rather than Glue, they have better and more glass elements some for clarity, some to gather more light others to stop chromatic aberration. Waterproof, scratchproof coatings etc.
So for me there is definitely a difference between a £300 Pair of Binoculars and a £2000 pair , but there is also a lot of difference between a £40 pair and a £300 pair, nip into any shop that sells them and try them out .
So always pick a budget and get the best you can . If your only going to use them once a month , pointless spending thousands ,if your out birding every day your able to like me , then pay for a lifetime of joy. People spend more on a weeks holiday than I've spent on Binoculars in my 50 years of birding , so I never feel guilty buying the best optics.
-- Edited by JOHN TYMON on Tuesday 16th of July 2024 05:43:09 PM
I can see both sides of this discussion but I should declare my interest as such, I have a pair of Leica Ultravids that I bought several years ago and they have been excellent. I think part of the equation is feeling like you have a really decent bit of kit in your hands, but if you are working on a budget I agree that you aren't particularly being held back by using cheaper bins and that feeling is clearly just a bonus and not essential to enjoying your birding. I bought mine with 12 months interest free credit, so it spread the cost, but obviously everyone is in a different boat with that.
I started with a cheap pair and they were OK but I went for Zeiss Conquests after a year or two, which were 700 at the time. It instantly improved my birding, at a time when I noticed and appreciated it, I responded to the extra sharpness in the image. I used them for a while but they were pretty heavy so I went for the Leicas, which were the lightest decent ones I could find. They have been brilliant for me, one of the things I feel they justify themselves with is how they go in poor light. I was watching Nightjars at the weekend and it is better with better bins, they are better in poor light, it is a simple fact. If you do much birding in those conditions or bashing hedges where birds are buried in shadow it can be very useful.
Ultimately I think it's about picking the right option for how much birding you do and how you go about it. I do a fair bit and I've felt more equipped for the job if that makes sense, but clearly some would say I've been suckered into that feeling...
Ive always gone for the best that I can afford, having owned Leica, Zeiss and Swarovski over the years. Typically I upgrade/trade in, every 10 years. My last pair were Zeiss Victory HTs, which I loved and had for around 10 years. Having heard good things about the Swarovski NL Pure, I visited Focal Point and as soon as I put my eyes to the binoculars and I instantly decided to buy them. They are just the best out there and high end wise, nothing compares.
The other thing I find, is always look after and clean your binoculars externally. When I sold my Zeiss, I pretty much got back what I originally paid for them. It never ceases to amaze me when I see birders in the field, with battered high end bins!
Thanks for your reply. Its reassuring thats its not just me regarding expensive optics. Before I bought my Optricon binoculars I owned a pair of Optolyth Touring 10x40 binoculars which were about 40 yrs old. There is basically no difference in performance. Chris Packham wrote an article on Optics Snobbery which was making the same point..
One very nice salesman I saw many years ago when I mentioned I've an eye condition that doesn't affect my eyesight too much yet (+/-1.5-2.0) will at somepoint deteriorate quite a lot.
I had with my a pair of Zeiss (8x42) handed down from my Grandad and a pair of Olympus 10x50s.
I ended with a £300 Hawkes as the bins that suited me the most, I had the money on me for £2k Swaros but really couldn't tell very much difference on test of either.
Wait until my eyes start to deteriorate I was told.
Move on a decade, my Hawkes are still my daily Bins. I was out with my eight decade of life uncle a few months ago who had been told exactly the same, except he is now in "deteriorating eyesight". He had just bought a second hand pair of Swaros for £650 vs £2k new. He could really now tell the difference. I still couldn't apart from slightly less chromatic aberration in bright light trying to look at backlit waders at Burton.
So Bins it seems secondhand could be a good route...if you can justify the price difference.
(I've had the same advice re scopes and a scope for a fifth of what I was going to spend has done me well..............not that I still pang one of great cost....).
The problem with optics is that quite often you have to pay double or treble the cost of the ones you're using for something that is really only slightly optical better. Just because they cost 3 times as much by no measure means they are 3 times better optically. If you're serious about upgrading why not buy a second hand pair (if available) of the ones you want. Binoculars these days should last virtually forever. So buying a second hand pair ought to ensure you still get many years of trouble free use at a vastly reduced cost.
I own a pair of Optricon DBA VHD 10x42 binoculars , thinking of upgrading to Swarovski, the ones Ive tested , not sure if its me but I dont see a significant difference. Any advice on upgrading would be gratefully appreciated
