I´ve fretted for years over this issue, and threatened to splash out on a pair of Canon IS 18x50...which I may do someday, but I don´t really do enough seawatching to warrant the outlay. This year I bought, on a well-known auction site rhyming with D.J., a pair of ultra-cheap monster bins called "Nipon 20x80" (Clever, huh? So you just might confuse them with "Nikons"
). They have a rod between the barrels with a tripod mount so I set them on my monopod while seawatching one day (with BF member and uber-gentleman Bitterntwisted). I could alternate between my scope and the monster bins, and scan with the bins when the one-eye-scoping business began to hurt my brain (I can manage an hour of this at a time, but not more). The big Nipons are great on a monopod, very bright and wide, sharp enough for the job, and when you pick something up you can then switch to the Scope. Much easier to scan the seas with the binos. Also, on those occasions when I couldn´t locate with the scope what had been called, and there was a chance it might pass by before I got it, I could leap out of the foxhole and dash across No-Man´s-Land with the big binos, braving North-Westerly squalls, to run along the cliff-tops and try and pick up the bird before it disappeared...impossible with mounted scope. The binos cost only eighty You-Ropes, which is about seventy Stair-Links, I think. So no big deal if they fall off a cliff. An added advantage is that in the quieter seawatching moments, you can amuse yourself by catching Kittiwakes or Gannets off-centre, against the sea, and making pretty psychedelic CA-patterns around them. Lovely Halloween Oranges and Flaring Yellows.
). They have a rod between the barrels with a tripod mount so I set them on my monopod while seawatching one day (with BF member and uber-gentleman Bitterntwisted). I could alternate between my scope and the monster bins, and scan with the bins when the one-eye-scoping business began to hurt my brain (I can manage an hour of this at a time, but not more). The big Nipons are great on a monopod, very bright and wide, sharp enough for the job, and when you pick something up you can then switch to the Scope. Much easier to scan the seas with the binos. Also, on those occasions when I couldn´t locate with the scope what had been called, and there was a chance it might pass by before I got it, I could leap out of the foxhole and dash across No-Man´s-Land with the big binos, braving North-Westerly squalls, to run along the cliff-tops and try and pick up the bird before it disappeared...impossible with mounted scope. The binos cost only eighty You-Ropes, which is about seventy Stair-Links, I think. So no big deal if they fall off a cliff. An added advantage is that in the quieter seawatching moments, you can amuse yourself by catching Kittiwakes or Gannets off-centre, against the sea, and making pretty psychedelic CA-patterns around them. Lovely Halloween Oranges and Flaring Yellows.
