Reasons for 8x (or 8.5x) against 10x (1 Viewer)

Gentlemen - Sorry if it appears I'm raining on our parade of ideas with my comments on age. Obviously, each person's health is on its own time table. As I near 75, I instinctively reach for lower power binoculars for a reason. I'm simply not as steady as I once was, and we all know what that means when birding. Older folks who do a lot of looking can train themselves to a degree to minimize the factors of age to be sure.

About a year ago I was out on a walk with a friend on a back country highway, he on one side and I on the other. I thought I was moving along at a good clip, until I glanced over to him. My God, he looked slow! But I couldn't say, but for the grace of God go I since I'm already there.

Being steady reminds me of a story. In 1967, I lived in a remote area of southcentral Montana. Mule deer were plentiful and hunting pressure was low. A friend from a city telephoned me and asked me to take him and his two adolescent children on a hunt. So we piled into my universal jeep with fourteen year old son and twelve year old daughter in the back. We ran across a small herd of mule deer with a mature buck. The distance was about 200 yards, a long but doable shot for a rifle with a scope. The young lad took his rifle, sat down with a sling on and took a shot. He missed, and the deer including the buck ran off.

Back at the jeep, his sister began to chide him for missig the shot. Both were enrolled in marksmanship classes - small bore. He of course was disappointed and did not take kindly to his sister's persistent comments on his shooting ability. So I decided to intervene with some of my own comments. I asked her she could have hit the deer. She replied, "Yes." I then commented that one had to be pretty steady to shoot that well. Her reply was "I'm pretty steady," said in a matter of fact way. Hmmmmm.

I lost track of the family, but about ten years later the local paper had a front page feature. The young lady had just won the gold metal in the Olympics for the United States in the air rifle category. She beat the world's best men. Yes, she was "pretty steady."

John

Great story John.

Back to the 8 vs 10 debate and age issues.

My wife has been out of town on business all week, and being pretty bored I have take all of my six pair of bins out, and set them on our dining table to play with this week. I have 6x30 Yosemite, 7x50 Fujinon, 8x32 SE, 8x42 Ultravid and 10x42 SE. I have mentioned in the past that I only use the 10x42 SEs about 10% of the time. I'm finding myself using them about 60%-70% of the time now with them sitting there so handy.

This isn't hard core testing, just viewing wildlife and scenery out our big windows. I love the view through thos SEs. Now I realize the reason I use the smaller bins out in the field 90% of the time is beacause they are smaller. The 10x42 SEs are bigger than I like to carry in the field, the little Yosemites and 8x32 SEs are perfect, the 8x42 Ultravid is as large and heavy as I like in the field. So I guess a good 10x42 roof would be ok for me. The one place I do carry the 10x42 SEs is the wide open country of eastern Montana.

Oh and I'm still good to go at sixty.

John

Age does factor into the equation, but each of us reacts differently as we age.

A number of years ago at the Bald Eagle Conference, then held at the local college, there was a optics booth and seminar run by Brunton. This was the year they introduced their original Eterna binoculars. There were a couple of these Eternas that were unmarked as to magnification. One was a 7x42, the other a 10x42. They were used during the course of the workshop to gather data on peoples reactions to different magnifications.

I was standing at the booth talking to the Brunton guy running the seminar. There was an elderly lady who came up and said to him something to the effect "...young man, I need to see your most powerful binoculars. My eyes are not what they once were and my old 10x just don't work for me any more". Well the fella asked her a few questions and then handed her an unmarked binocular and suggested she try it. Her reaction was "just how powerful is this?". He said that all she needed was to just see how she liked it. It was a cold gray March day and looking through the large plate glass windows of the student union across the mall there was a fountain with a couple of Ravens nearby. Well she looked and her reaction was "...OMG these are terrific, I can even see their eyes blink!". It turned out that they were the 7x42. It made the point that she could see what she was looking at better because she could hold them steadier than the 10's, which she did not particularly like. He sold her a 7x42 on the spot.

The moral is that a steady lower magnification trumps a shakier higher magnification. I'm almost 62, and can still hold a 10x pretty well. However I have come to really like the 6-7x magnification range. I have a 10x I use occasionally, for when the conditions favor it,it can be nice to have. But I will take a little less almost every time. I tend to find that if I need more magnification then 6-8x, a jump to around 15x is really needed.

Didn't the US military prove that even young fit men cannot see better than with about 7-8x when handheld, about umh... 60 years ago?

Kevin Conville said:

Didn't the US military prove that even young fit men cannot see better than with about 7-8x when handheld, about umh... 60 years ago?

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They showed that for typical military large silhouette targets (like soldiers at 2000 yards, tanks, aircraft and ships) 7x worked well enough for military purposes. They weren't IDing warblers in the tree/mast tops.

And it's clearly today the US Army think that 14x IS bins are a good idea too as they're used vehicle mounted and dismounted. "Is that guy 1500m out carrying a irrigation pipe or a RPG7 launcher?" is an important question. Clearly more magnification is useful some of the time.

The 7x usage was biased to a very different environment (the birds haven't started shooting at me yet so I don't get the shakes unless it's a really good bird) or on moving platforms (I have birded on a Puget Sound ferry with 8x and that was too much for the engine vibration or in the Skagit Valley looking for Snow Geese when I wished I'd brought my 6x Yosemite for birding on the move when the 8x were jumping around).

I recently measured a limit to my birding with a group of Golden-crowned Kinglets at 46m with 7x42 FLs in the top of an exotic spruce. I could just see the yellow crown and the wingbars. It sort of verifies Peter Dunne's comments (another 7x user with better vision than me I suspect) that passarine birding range and birdshot "collecting" range are about the same. But that was right at the limit and I already jizzed this bird that I know well to be a GCK. If I hadn't have know what it was I would have been having some problems. With 8x it would have been a little easier. With a 10x even more so.

Using these sort of measures and saying "then that's ideal for birds" is a mistake. Depending on birds, habitat and usage we could all make use of bins from 6x to 10x trading off shake and FOV with detail and range. And with a monopod 10x up to 20x. Just make sure you bring the right bins.

It's clear that in some circumstances more magnification will "bring the bird closer" so you can actually get a solid ID. Sometimes it's needed.

But that was right at the limit and I already jizzed this bird that I know well to be a GCK.

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With all the familiar birds, the binos are just confirmation. We already know it is a mourning dove on the wire, or if very far away and just one bird, might be a kestrel.

Kevin Conville said:

Didn't the US military prove that even young fit men cannot see better than with about 7-8x when handheld, about umh... 60 years ago?

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It´s odd then that, considering the greying of the birding/hunting population, that there isn´t more demand for, or R&D into, IS binos.

I suppose it is Sancho, but there may be reasons...

Maybe many, like myself, are turned off a bit by the shape (ergonomics), the shape (aesthetics), the specter of complexity and therefore reliability, and the need for batteries. Let's face it, IS bins are no where near as sexy as a Swaro EL or a Leica BL, or as rock solid durable. If they looked less like toasters they'd be more marketable I suspect.

I will own IS bins before long myself however, as the advantages are undeniable.

Kevin P,

Clearly IS or some form of support changes the equation.

"It's clear that in some circumstances more magnification will "bring the bird closer" so you can actually get a solid ID. Sometimes it's needed."
This isn't so clear, for me.

Everyone is different of course and certainly there are those who may be able to discern finer detail with a 10x v 8x bino (handheld), I'm not one of them.

I have to admit to not giving a tremendous amount of consideration to this issue these days, as I almost always have a spotting scope with me.

Sancho said:

It´s odd then that, considering the greying of the birding/hunting population, that there isn´t more demand for, or R&D into, IS binos.

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Think grandmas looking at birdfeeders. IS is too technical. The only technical thing they will deal with is the microwave and the TV remote.

Kevin Conville said:

If they looked less like toasters they'd be more marketable I suspect.

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:-O! Mind you, I´ve come to rather like the dumpy, awkward shape of my 10x30´s....it´s the Munchkin of the 10x world.

Tero said:

Think grandmas looking at birdfeeders. IS is too technical. The only technical thing they will deal with is the microwave and the TV remote.

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:-O! (again) And the IS bins might interefere with their pacemakers. Mind you they might interfere with my pacemaker in years to come, so I shouldn´t laugh.

Kevin Conville said:

Maybe many, like myself, are turned off a bit by the shape (ergonomics), the shape (aesthetics), the specter of complexity and therefore reliability, and the need for batteries. Let's face it, IS bins are no where near as sexy as a Swaro EL or a Leica BL, or as rock solid durable. If they looked less like toasters they'd be more marketable I suspect.

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But curiously hunters do buy electro-optical (i.e. delicate and vulnerable to the damp) rangefinders with brand names on them. And yes, they're boxy too though some are a bit better than others (the Zeiss bin+rangefinders look most like real bins).

I suspect "alpha dawg" outlook ("I can hold my bins plenty steady"), brand names and a certain conservatism is at work here amongst the hunters (and probably birders too).

The 7x usage was biased to a very different environment (the birds haven't started shooting at me yet so I don't get the shakes unless it's a really good bird)

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I have to confess to ridiculous equipment lust for both the 15x56SLC and the 8x56FL at the moment; I've never even held the latter, its just from re-reading the spec, reviews and descriptions like:

It is gross overkill in daylight, but its sparkling clarity is breathtaking

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In relation to the original 8x or 10x topic I have been busy since reading up further on the advice about fields of view, image differences and mainly, I suppose, just trying to get a better understanding of the pros and cons to the 10x I was leaning towards at the start.

I've changed my mind and decided to stay with the 8.5x. Although I read a lot of facts and figures and stories about image differences, my main reason in the end was the fact that the 10x would have more shake. I know there's going to be folk sitting on both sides of the fence and some would argue from their camp that shake is no reason to turn down a pair of binoculars but I honestly intend to keep these for years and, although not prehistoric, I am not too brilliantly steady as it is.

All being well, I'll have them here soon and can get down to the business of teaming them up with my 8x32's. And most important of all, enjoying them :-O

Thanks to everyone for their advice, I appreciate it.

Mark

I can not hold 10x still, so I lose detail and can´t focus on the target. 10x and more magnification is for tripods and IS bins, imho.

The whole purpose of binoculars is to magnify the view, so it's easy to conclude that more magnification must be better. For my uses, which include birding and hunting on foot almost entirely on flat, wooded to open country, sometimes in very wet conditions, occasionally in tree stands, experience has led me to feel that 8 or 8.5 is the best all around choice. For every time I wish I were carrying a 10x there are three or four times I'm glad I'm not and a couple of times I wish I had a 7x in hand. Hiking and exerting yourself raises your pulse and breathing and makes it much harder to get a steady view at high magnification. When I read accounts of beginners trying a high magnification glass in a store and being surprised at how steady they can hold it, I want to tell them to leave the store and jog to the corner and back and then try looking through those 15x glasses. Of course, if trying to watch birds in vegetation the more FOV the better as they flit from branch to branch. A larger exit pupil is also noticeably less fatiguing on the eyes over the course of a long day of glassing, especially the way hunters sometimes do it, almost continuously sometimes for hours on end.

Now, if I did a lot of viewing from a car or tree stand or did a lot of open country glassing from high vantage points rested or from a monopod, I would want at least 10x and probably more. The same would be true if I spent a lot of time watching shorebirds. Many people go figure that if they're going to be stationary anyway, they might as well glass with a comfortable binocular and then reach out with a spotter.

Good points. Strangely, though I love my EII 10x35, the jump from 8x to 8.5x is as significant a leap for me, as that from 8.5x to 10x. What I mean is that the extra half-degree of magnification on top of an 8x bino gives me a quantum leap that´s as important as 10x. What really causes all optics to shake in my hands isn´t my hands per se, it´s my heartbeat, "Pa-dump, Pa-dump, Pa-dump...", and it happens with all bins of whatever mag, even 7x. IS bins correct for this, and give a wonderfully steady view for relatively stationary or slow-moving birds. But the fiddly nature of re-focussing after pressing the IS button makes them more complicated to use for moving birds in trees, etc.

Do you use the military (thumbs up) grip, Sancho?

I find that makes a significant difference for higher magnification bins (and even 8x benefits).

For those who think 8x is their limit should try that grip ... it can make a difference fro some.

Kevin Purcell said:

use the military (thumbs up) grip

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You mean having the thumbs along the length axis of the tubes, not across (as the fingers are).

Wow, that's so much better!

Thanks! :king: