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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Field glasses optional (1 Viewer)

Gijs, I meant only (as Joachim guessed) that I thought 8x was uncommon back in the 1940s. When growing up in the 1960s I only had or saw 7, 10, 15x. Unfortunately we weren't birders, I only came to it later in life. I'm enjoying the stories of those who started early. What caught your attention? I think it wasn't only birds that I wasn't noticing...

I wasn't around then, but the impression I get is that 7x was more popular in the States back in the day, whereas 8x might have been more popular in Europe. 8x30 certainly has long been popular amongst European manufacturers. Allbinos has an informative page covering Zeiss's 8x30 Deltrintem and variants that were first made in the 1920s, and Leitz's 8x30 porro first appeared, it would seem, in 1927. I'm not so familiar with 8x40s, but these were definitely produced by Zeiss (and probably by other European manufacturers) and, post-war, in Japan. Later on there were the classic 8x40 and 8x32 Leitz Trinovid roofs and the 8x30 Dialyt. Peterson's recommendation of 8x matches my own (meager by comparison, I hastily add!) experience very well.

As to whether "field glasses" are optional - well as the replies above illustrate, for some types of birding, they are, if one's fieldcraft is up to par. Mine isn't, and being able to take a closer look at the birds greatly enhances my enjoyment of the day, so binoculars are most definitely essential for me. The birding I do most often can't be done without binoculars. The building that one pair flies from is over one kilometre from my vantage point.
 
Easy, that is because birds are more important than conversations. :king:

Etudiant,
Thats what I keep telling my friends but they're very sniffy about it and almost always never laugh.

Growing up in the 60’s on the cold Canadian prairies we had a lot of WW II military surplus porro binoculars floating around. Those things were brutes, huge, heavy and they seemed to have a will of their own which fought you every inch of the way. It might explain why birding without optics was a happy option for small hands. They were cheap to buy and were often new and unused.

In fact as I recall the Canadian military had a brick and mortar outlet on the local military base where one could buy just about anything. One summer in the late sixties I was poking around this outlet with a friend who on a whim bought an original boxed and unassembled WWII Triumph motorcycle with sidecar for a song. At least it was cheap enough that an enterprising teenager could afford one. Every square inch of that thing except the tires were painted green.

I couldn't tell you now what make the porros were at that outlet but they came in a fashionable green as well.

Cheers,
Bryan
 
Etudiant,
Thats what I keep telling my friends but they're very sniffy about it and almost always never laugh.

Growing up in the 60’s on the cold Canadian prairies we had a lot of WW II military surplus porro binoculars floating around. Those things were brutes, huge, heavy and they seemed to have a will of their own which fought you every inch of the way. It might explain why birding without optics was a happy option for small hands. They were cheap to buy and were often new and unused.

In fact as I recall the Canadian military had a brick and mortar outlet on the local military base where one could buy just about anything. One summer in the late sixties I was poking around this outlet with a friend who on a whim bought an original boxed and unassembled WWII Triumph motorcycle with sidecar for a song. At least it was cheap enough that an enterprising teenager could afford one. Every square inch of that thing except the tires were painted green.

I couldn't tell you now what make the porros were at that outlet but they came in a fashionable green as well.

Cheers,
Bryan

Canada had a pretty substantial binocular industry during WW2 and subsequently. They even produced Leica derivatives under license, think REL was the designation. Not sure any of that survives today...
 
Canada had a pretty substantial binocular industry during WW2 and subsequently. They even produced Leica derivatives under license, think REL was the designation. Not sure any of that survives today...

Be fun to have had the foresight to snag a "still in its packaging" pair back then. Unfortunately I didn't.
Cheers,
Bryan
 
One could buy a complete Spitfire for £10 surplus. Minus guns.
Many aircraft were just tipped over the side of the carriers to save having to pay for them.

There are many REL binoculars, still low price.
Unfortunately no Avro Arrows.
 
Hi,

I really liked it, for a historical perspective (first published 1949, this is a later edition with exciting full color plates!) but mainly as an example of how to write something like this, with an engaging style, a focus on basics, and keeping attention on the birds and their lives.

[...]

Oh, almost forgot the bino tidbit! Peterson opined that "field glasses" are entirely optional... and then recommended 8x, which struck me as odd because I thought those hardly existed back then.

As a kid in the 1970s, I received a book on birding specifically written for kids as a gift. It was quite serious, focussing on observable bird behaviour, and also recommended birders' kit, which included a notebook for note-taking and sketching, but binoculars were also mentioned.

This book was quite a favourite of mine, and I don't know how it got lost. Unfortunately, I have no idea of author or title, or I'd try to find a used copy somewhere.

Despite my fascination with the content of the book, I didn't actually take up birding back then. I guess the complete lack of any "field guide" content left me without a starting point.

I did actually buy a pair of binoculars from my very limited pocket money - whether before or after being given the birding book, I'm not sure. The idea of seeing objects at a great distance seemed fascinating enough for me as a kid that I might not even have considered the question of what to use them for.

As I could only afford the cheapest binoculars available by mail order, I ended up with a pair of 2.5 x 22 folding glasses. (At least, that seems to have been a typical size for these back then ... I actually threw away the original pair after an eyepiece became unglued and got lost.)

Today, I'd say that those optics were hardly an improvement over the naked eye, but as a kid, I thought they were great. Not that I ever used them for birding ...

Regards,

Henning
 
One could buy a complete Spitfire for £10 surplus. Minus guns.
Many aircraft were just tipped over the side of the carriers to save having to pay for them.

There are many REL binoculars, still low price.
Unfortunately no Avro Arrows.

The memory is a bit dim on the the binoculars that were available but they were probably REL's. A few Jeep Willies as well as I recall.
No Avro Arrows but those bad boys were post war so I would've been out of luck picking one up for a song ;-)

Regarding field glasses optional, one thing I've noticed is how little I'm using notebooks these days. The ubiquitous smart phone has radically changed all that. I'll still always have a notebook and pencil with me but most of my note taking is now of the voice memo kind. I'll even in a pinch use it to record calls. Slap a little rode microphone with windsock in the jack and instant quick and dirty recording. Good enough for narrowing down who belongs to that call. I wonder how other folks in the field are handling or using the new tech.

I guess what it boils down to is use every tool in the box, eyes and ears, bins, notebooks, field guides and iPhones not to mention cameras.
In my case the key bit of kit are still binoculars, everything else is gravy.


Cheers,
Bryan
 
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