Uses of binoculars (1 Viewer)

[Tero]

I have some ideas of what I need the binoculars to do. But they may be made for wide ranges of uses

-astronomy
-sports
-theater, concerts
-outdoors general
-outdoors night

I looked up some product and it listed two uses:
Power X Obj. Dia.: 10x50
Field of View: 342 ft. at 1,000 yds.
Exit Pupil: 5 mm
Eye Relief: 19
Dimensions: 6.9in. x6.9in. x3.0in.
Focus Type: center focus
Shipping Weight: 3.6 lbs.
Product Weight: 1.95 lbs.
Shipping Width: 9Inches
Shipping Length: 12Inches
Shipping Height: 6Inches
Magnification: 10 x
Objective: 50 mm

Hunting Yes
Camping Yes

Just curious about who uses all these. And how technical requirements relate to the use. Google was of no help.

 

[Colin]

and if you look down the 'wrong end' you can use them as a magnifying glass. I sometimes use them this way if I have to read anything in the field and I have found I have left my reading specs in the car/at home. Useful tip but judging by some of the quizzical looks that I get, some people don't realise that you can use them in this way.

 

[Leif]

I sometimes use binoculars for mushroom picking. Beats walking 100m to find that a candidate chanterelle is a Birch tree leaf.

Some people have mentioned that the Leica APO Televid 77 is so sturdy that it could be used to hammer nails in. I think I'll stick to a conventional hammer rather than the fancy German one.

 

[Jane Turner]

My old dialyts make an excellent emergency scope rest on the window ledge

 

[mcdowella]

Here's a go at a more serious answer: most of these figures are trade-offs of some sort. The most important one is 10x50: 10x magnification and 50mm lens diameter. 10x is just about as much magnification as makes sense when hand held (as opposed to tripod mounted). More magnification needs more light to drive it, at 50mm is a good amount for 10x - you ideally want about 5x the magnification and they quote this figure for you as the exit pupil size. The cost of 50mm of course is weight. The other cost of magnification is that you only see a small portion of the area in front of you, but the field of view quoted here - 342 feet at 1000 yards, is IMHO pretty good for 10x. Sometimes that is a tradeoff against resolution.

Eye relief 19mm means spec wearers should have no problems seeing the full field of view, but means that you have to hold them more accurately to actually see through them.

You'll see birdwatchers using anything from 7x30 to 12x50. The standard recommendation used to be 8x40. IHMO 10x40 or 10x50 is at least as common these days, and the decision depends partly on whether they spend their time walking through vegetation scanning for reasonably close birds or looking out over large expanses of mud or water at far away birds.

 

[Tero]

I have a pair of 12Xs, very cheap. I don't have a scope, so I use those. They are almost no better than 8x, so I usually stick to 8x and 10x.

I see some binoculars with a sort of zoom lens. They seem a bit unreliable, but I wondered who need them. They went up to 15x.

Got some zooms too, cheap ones. No good past 10x as expected. Well, very dim at 15x, some detail in middle.