black crow
Well-known member
I've greatly benefited from the expertise on these forums as far as finding good binoculars. Many of the regular posters here are IMO experts in optics and I'm grateful for their skills and willingness to share them with an amature like me. I've tried to learn a little but it's really not what I'm good at or why binoculars hold great interest for me in the end. Different strokes for different folks and I'm a different folk for sure.
When I think back on my binocular history I find that I have the most fondness for my first pair of binoculars. I believe they were Nikon in a 7x21 compact configuration and cost around $75 which was a lot of bucks for me. I carried them for about 30 years and even though they were not waterproof I never go them wet and they always worked great. I finally gave them away to a very dear friend who I knew would never buy any for himself.
I got them soon after I left my childhood home on the run from a abusive situation. I had a backpack and a couple hundred dollars and those binoculars. For most of the next twenty years I drifted from one minimum wage job to the next until I had stashed $3-500 or so and then quit and lived out of my pack in Washington, Oregon and Northern California wilderness areas for the summer season and then repeated the operation year after year. Something like that. I didn't know anything about FOV, CA, or any of the technicalities of optics and for me that wasn't a loss because I saw so much of interest and beauty in those binoculars that my life has been forever enriched far beyond any career or any mainstream life I might have had, had things been different for me. At least that's how it looks to me now all these many years down all those roads. Going nowhere but always being fully there.
I only came into money just before it was getting to be close to retirement age. Then two unexpected inheritances set me up and allowed me to even retire a few years early and start buying "better" binoculars. Being the type of person I am with all my personal strengths and weaknesses I can't say that I enjoy any of my "much better" optics over that first beloved pair of binos. In fact in some ways for me trying to get technical over optics is a drawback. That first pair was more of a means to an end than to an end in themselves which is a trap I occasionally fall into when getting all caught up in the hunt for the perfect optic in my price range.
I'm not sharing this to dis anything that goes on here. There is great joy I'm sure in really understanding the fine details of optics for many here and it doesn't mean anyone enjoys the what they see in them any less. That's obvious. In fact it just adds more to the pot. However it's not the only way to do the binocular thing for sure and that's why I'm saying all this.
From having many pair of mid range and slightly above binoculars and also inheriting a top end pair of Swarovski's I can honestly say for myself and likely for many others that one pair of $1-200 binoculars is all it takes to get just as much joy from optics as anyone else. It's not less in any way but just different. It's simple, simple like when you were a kid just starting out and looking through that binocular was a door into wonder on the most basic level.
Those years alone, on the road with my pack and binoculars, and up in the wilderness areas ( mostly Eastern Oregon High Desert Great Basin and Northeastern California's Warner Mountain wilderness. Mostly trailess and roadless areas) I was about as free as I've ever been and could have been and more at peace and less alone than I've ever been since. Sitting on an open mountainside or a desert canyon at a little base camp, glassing at dusk as the wildlife came out into the open was really nurturing, peaceful and fun, especially because of what I had gone through at home as a kid. It was the best time in my life even though it cost me a career and a family and most of the normal ways of being grounded in this culture and for that, looking back over a somewhat seedy or at least weedy past, I can say I'm really and truly grateful.
I'll never own a better pair of binoculars.
When I think back on my binocular history I find that I have the most fondness for my first pair of binoculars. I believe they were Nikon in a 7x21 compact configuration and cost around $75 which was a lot of bucks for me. I carried them for about 30 years and even though they were not waterproof I never go them wet and they always worked great. I finally gave them away to a very dear friend who I knew would never buy any for himself.
I got them soon after I left my childhood home on the run from a abusive situation. I had a backpack and a couple hundred dollars and those binoculars. For most of the next twenty years I drifted from one minimum wage job to the next until I had stashed $3-500 or so and then quit and lived out of my pack in Washington, Oregon and Northern California wilderness areas for the summer season and then repeated the operation year after year. Something like that. I didn't know anything about FOV, CA, or any of the technicalities of optics and for me that wasn't a loss because I saw so much of interest and beauty in those binoculars that my life has been forever enriched far beyond any career or any mainstream life I might have had, had things been different for me. At least that's how it looks to me now all these many years down all those roads. Going nowhere but always being fully there.
I only came into money just before it was getting to be close to retirement age. Then two unexpected inheritances set me up and allowed me to even retire a few years early and start buying "better" binoculars. Being the type of person I am with all my personal strengths and weaknesses I can't say that I enjoy any of my "much better" optics over that first beloved pair of binos. In fact in some ways for me trying to get technical over optics is a drawback. That first pair was more of a means to an end than to an end in themselves which is a trap I occasionally fall into when getting all caught up in the hunt for the perfect optic in my price range.
I'm not sharing this to dis anything that goes on here. There is great joy I'm sure in really understanding the fine details of optics for many here and it doesn't mean anyone enjoys the what they see in them any less. That's obvious. In fact it just adds more to the pot. However it's not the only way to do the binocular thing for sure and that's why I'm saying all this.
From having many pair of mid range and slightly above binoculars and also inheriting a top end pair of Swarovski's I can honestly say for myself and likely for many others that one pair of $1-200 binoculars is all it takes to get just as much joy from optics as anyone else. It's not less in any way but just different. It's simple, simple like when you were a kid just starting out and looking through that binocular was a door into wonder on the most basic level.
Those years alone, on the road with my pack and binoculars, and up in the wilderness areas ( mostly Eastern Oregon High Desert Great Basin and Northeastern California's Warner Mountain wilderness. Mostly trailess and roadless areas) I was about as free as I've ever been and could have been and more at peace and less alone than I've ever been since. Sitting on an open mountainside or a desert canyon at a little base camp, glassing at dusk as the wildlife came out into the open was really nurturing, peaceful and fun, especially because of what I had gone through at home as a kid. It was the best time in my life even though it cost me a career and a family and most of the normal ways of being grounded in this culture and for that, looking back over a somewhat seedy or at least weedy past, I can say I'm really and truly grateful.
I'll never own a better pair of binoculars.
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