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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kevin Purcell" data-source="post: 1714847" data-attributes="member: 68323">True I love to Jizz ID birds too. But at the same time there are some pairs of species (or subspecies) that you need to see a particular field mark to place them in one or the other species (or determine that their a hybrid). Or you need to read VID tags or rings/bands on birds.I notice the comment that lots of experienced birders use lower magnifications. Two comments on that. The birders (like Peter Dunne, David Sibley, Roger Peterson) all are Eastern birders where habitats tend to bias more towards close in rather than distant birds. I also suspect some of them have rather better sight than most of us (though Sibley is a glasses wearer) a sort of contributor factor to becoming a birder. A person with 20:10 vision will see the same details through a 7x bin that a person with 20:14 vision will see through a 10x.As your eye limits the resolution seen through a bin then the magnification limits the resolution up to about 12x The real trade off is magnification versus FOV that you can seen. Making things bigger makes the identification quicker (if the bird stays in the field) but finding the bird is easier with a bigger FOV.Another hidden part of this trade off is glare reduction in smaller FOV bins tends to help higher magnification bins.Shake can be dealt with (very effectively with either IS or a tripod or monopod (as seen above). Both methods show that you get perhaps 30% more resolution from the same bins. But if you cant' use either then reducing magnification is the only way to go handheld.If only someone made an IS bin with all the features I want with a good warranty for a decent price <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" />In the meantime I pick the magnification for the habitat (and hope I don't end up in places that seem common in the PNW with both forested areas and wide open marshes or prairies or seawater/lake views) so I have 6x, 7x, 8x and 10x bins and some spotter scopes to hand.One other interesting possibility is perhaps to team a wide FOV 7x (Zeiss FL 7x42 or ZR 7x36 or Nikon ATB 7x35 ... I have all of them) with a Canon 15x50 IS for those times you need more magnification. Easier to carry than a spotter and it uses both eyes. And parallels the technique used by the US Army (with 7x M22 or M24 and the 14x IS M25).But I often get the feeling I have the wrong bin with me but that may just be me <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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