Bird Watching Binoculars: Dos and Don’ts

There are many dos and don’ts when considering bird watching binoculars.  These are important things to know if you are a keen bird watcher, and should help bird watchers of any level of experience excel.

Dos:

1) The power, or magnification, of you bird watching binoculars optimally should be at least 7.  7 power binoculars are considered the lowest requirement to capture a good image of bird. However, do not be tempted to oversee this and opt for a 10 power for instance.  With greater magnification comes less stability, so there is the constant balance of magnification vs. image quality.

2) Weight.  Weight is important when considering bird watching binoculars.  At the end of the day, you are going to be carrying your binoculars with you on your walks, and something uncomfortable is not suitable.  Also make sure that the binoculars come with adjustable straps, as you do not want to have them bouncing off your stomach whilst your walk.

Don’ts:

1) Pocket sized binoculars.  These compact binoculars are good in their own right, but definitely should not be picked as a main bird watching binocular.  They do not offer quality or stability, or even often the magnification that larger binoculars do.  This will impact on your viewing in a detrimental way.

2) Do not purchase binoculars until you have fully tested them out.  It can be tempting to see an item on sale with a seemingly good spec range on paper, but unless you have tested them out, you will never fully know how well they will function.  After all, bird watching binoculars should be comfortable, and this is very hard to test in the environment of a shop.

Top Tips for Bird Watching

Bird watching is becoming an ever more popular past time of the British nation.  With a huge and electric range of species, the UK really can offer some amazing sights for keen bird watchers.  Also, with Britain being a very costal area, birds are abundant here, and with the different landscapes of Britain’s coastline comes different types of bird.  Finding the right bird watching binoculars can be a challenge, but they are essential for capturing these amazing animals.

Our first top tip for bird watching is finding a good pair of bird watching binoculars.  You can opt for traditional and reliable binoculars, or you can indulge in some high tech, and find binoculars with accessories such as image stabilisation and anti-fog mechanisms.  Whatever you choose however, you should feel comfortable whilst using them, and make sure that they are a good weight for you.

It is also imperative to study a good field guide.  After all, there is no point in having a brilliant pair of bird watching binoculars if you don’t know where the birds are!  You should attempt to familiarise yourself with different species of birds.  Birds are classified into families, so it can also be beneficial to study the nature of these families, and their specific habitats.  After you can differentiate between families, it is a good idea to start looking at sub-groups, and then onto more specific types of bird.

Learning bird calls can also be useful for anyone wanting to bird watch.  This makes it easier to locate a bird just by hearing it –rather than attempting to view it.  Using all of your senses is key to spotting a good bird.

Opticron Aspheric 8×40 Binoculars Win the BBC Sky at Night Bino Brilliance group Test

Novembers copy or the BBC Sky at night magazine sees a group test of 8×40 binoculars. Charged with looking for a pair of  versatile 8×40 binoculars that gave quick easy views of the nights sky. Each of the binoculars was judged on the  adjustment, focusing, optics and build quality. The Opticron Aspheric  8x40 binocular was deemed as best all rounder offering better overall quality of workmanship, lower amount of ghosting and slightly crisper field of view. All of these helped to push the Opticron into the winning position. Paul Money from BBC Sky at Night Group test said that when wanting to observe the sky between gaps in the cloud it was the Opticron pair that was reached for every time and they were the overall winners this month. Novembers BBC Sky at Night magazine containing the group test in full can be purchased from all good newsagents.

We currently have a price of  £67.00 on the Aspheric Binoculars making them even better value for money.

Does Night Vision Actually Work?

When many people ponder about night vision goggles, the images of spy films usually come to mind.  With many things in spy films being completely hocus pocus, many people also believe that night vision is one of these myths.  But really, they actually work!  With the proper equipment, you really can see people up to 200 yards away on a cloudy dark night.  Night vision technology generally follows concepts of two trends.  These two trends are thermal imaging, and image enhancement.

Thermal Imaging simply works by capturing the upper portion on an infrared spectrum.  What this means is that heat is omitted and turned into light when viewing into the night vision goggle.  Therefore, you can see where heat is, and where heat is not.  This makes our warm human bodies stand out from cold trees.  Thermal imaging is great for nocturnal animal lovers.  This technology allows the viewer to see nocturnal animals in their natural habitat, which when considering the dark nights, is a rarity.

Image enhancement works in a very different way that thermal imagery.  It basically works by collecting tiny fragments of light and digitally enhancing and amplifying them.  Light is captured into an image enhancing telescope with the traditional objective lens.  However, as with a normal telescope where the light would travel untreated, an image enhancing telescope intensifies the light with electrical power.  Simply put, light that normally would not be perceived by our naked human eye is amplified, allowing us to see in extremely low-light situations.

Binoculars Explained

Binoculars are simply two telescopes strapped together, one for each eye.  Whilst this limits them in some areas such as range, it allows the viewer to effectively judge distance.  This is because to be able to judge distance, a person needs both eyes to view the object, which traditional astronomical telescopes do not do.  Socially, binoculars are used mainly for bird watching, and they are the perfect tool to help you to do this.  They are generally light weight, and easy to use.

Binoculars work on the principle of a reflector telescope.  This means that instead of a traditional straight lens, binoculars have mirrors inside them which help to gather light.  This all adds up for quality of image when viewing through the binocular.

With technology taking a presence in all fields of life, new high-tech binocular technology has changed the way that hand-held binoculars work.  Some binoculars can now offer image stabilisation, allowing the viewer to view a desired moving target with extra confidence.  This image stabilisation generally works by having gyroscopes mounted within the binoculars to stable the inevitable shaky movements.  However, some disadvantages also come with this technology.  Mainly, this regards the quality of image.  The quality of image from a binocular fastened to  a tripod will not be as good as expected.  Also, these high tech binoculars tend to be more expensive, and heavier.

New technologies are revolutionising the way binoculars function.  With this new technology generally comes expense, but it is well worth it.  Modern binoculars can come with an array of specification, with extras such as Anti-Fog viewing.

How Do Telescopes Work?

How do telescopes work?  A question that many star gazers may ask when first starting out.  There are many things to learn about when a novice in the astronomical telescope context, such as refractors, reflectors, and filters.  Well here at Sherwoods-Photo we enjoy helping our customers, and our quick and simple guide to astronomical telescopes should shed some light on the different parts of a telescope.

So, a telescope can be described as a device that magnifies distant objects.  There are many different shapes and sizes of telescopes.  The size usually can be directly linked to the magnification of a telescope.

There are two main concepts when considering how a telescope works.  These two main notions are refractor telescopes, and reflector telescopes.  Refractor telescopes use a glass lens, where reflector telescopes use mirrors.  Now, both of these types of telescope achieve exactly the same result, just in different ways.

Refractor telescopes were first developed in the 1600’s, by the famous gentleman Galileo.  Refractors are the more common type of telescope, and their design is simple in concept.  There are three main parts that refractor telescopes are made from.

These are:
1)    A long tube – generally plastic or metal
2)    The glass lens at the front (also known as the objective lens)
3)    The glass lens at the viewing side (also known as the eyepiece)

Reflector telescopes are slightly more complicated in design, but can offer quality image.  They work by using a mirror to gather light, instead of the traditional lens.  Mirrors do not have chromatic aberration, which is the main benefit of a reflector telescope.