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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stephen Prower" data-source="post: 3335399" data-attributes="member: 115634">Viewing through monocular with both eyes openJohn1. I don't think that 'competition' is the right word to describe the relation between monoculars and binoculars. For the purposes that most people use binoculars, the binocular is by far the superior tool. You just need to compare the view through one barrel of a binocular with the view through both barrels.But as to 'variables' specific to the monocular, you could add the variable, for people who retain the sight of both eyes, of enabling the technique of viewing a scene with both eyes open.2. Discussion of the topic is rare on the Bird Forum. The best technical article that I have found on the topic comes from the world of law enforcement:--------<a href="http://www.forcenecessary.com/force-necessary-combatives/articles/monocularandbinocularshooting/" target="_blank">http://www.forcenecessary.com/force-necessary-combatives/articles/monocularandbinocularshooting/</a>'Article – Monocular and Binocular ShootingThe Shooting Eye Matrixby W. Hock Hochheim'--------3. Thus with a little practice one can view, using a monocular, with both eyes open. You can view separate images at the same time in the open, and the monocular, eye. Indeed as an exercise you can overlay the magnified image in the monocular eye on top of the unmagnified image in the open eye.I don't use a monocular often. And I have used the technique mostly only for viewing little birds at some 10-20 yards range from my house. So I don't develop, save to say that the technique is useful in some situations, and list a few brief observations.a) I have tested to see if the peripheral reflex attraction to movement operates in the open eye. It will take more exhaustive testing to be certain, but my first impression is that it does.b) The visual switch from detecting a bird in the scene that is viewed with the open eye to seeking to lay the monocular on the bird with the monocular eye takes a blink of the open eye.I say 'seeking' to lay the monocular on the bird because one will often need to perform the intervening task of calibrating the two views. With a featureless scene, such as a hedge or a tree in leaf, this can prove difficult.c) A limitation sometimes of the usefulness of the technique is the poor quality, as unenhanced by binocular vision, of the unmagnified image in the open eye.d) It requires a high figure of light transmission by the monocular to reduce unwanted interference with the image in the monocular eye from the image in the open eye. Such interference can substantially reduce the good viewable area of the image in the monocular eye.I use the Helios AMD+ 8x32 Super High Resolution monocular as recommended by mgsphilip on 3 January 2014 in Bird Forum.The Helios seems outwardly similar to the 30mm or 32mm objective monoculars, ranging from 5x to 8x magnification, offered for sale by Opticron, Kite, and (now no longer listed) Monk.The price of such monoculars clusters around the £80 to £120 mark.Stephen</blockquote>

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