Field Of Vision

[Timo2112]

Hello all,
The more I research binoculars, the more questions I have, and the less I am sure of.

I wanted to ask this question really. Is there any sort of trade off involved by getting a wider field of vision? I have been getting fed up with the fov of my old 10s and have decided to buy 8s this time around, but notice that many binoculars, (between about £100 and £300 at least) seem to have fairly unremarkable fov, then I came across the Bushnell Excursions which have an fov of about 142m. My initial thought is 'well that's good then', but then I get to wondering, but will I lose out somewhere else by having that fov? I don't want to become obsessed with fov if that's going to end up sending me down the wrong track...

As usual, I'd be grateful for any information anyone could give me on this subject.

Tim

[etudiant]

Wide field is usually at the price of both image edge distortion as well as reduced eye relief.
Getting all three, wide field, low edge distortion and decent eye relief in the same package is very expensive.
An expert like Henry Link could explain why.

[Howard220]

Hello all,
I wanted to ask this question really. Is there any sort of trade off involved by getting a wider field of vision? I have been getting fed up with the fov of my old 10s and have decided to buy 8s this time around, but notice that many binoculars, (between about £100 and £300 at least) seem to have fairly unremarkable fov,


I'm with you -- I don't like a narrow *apparent* field of view such as 50 degrees or smaller. At 8x that translates to, what, around 340 feet (about 105 meters) or less? I find a good compromise to be about 390 - 400 ft (about 122 meters). Keeping the field to that spec at 8x can still gets you decent edge sharpness and eye relief. In general, I'd say the more you spend, the better the latter two specs. It is very hard (i.e. expensive) to fully correct a wide field.