Waterproof Binoculars

There have been many advances in binocular technology over the last 20 years, making today’s binoculars more powerful, more stable and more durable than ever. Watertight technology has been one of the key innovations of recent times, resulting in waterproof and water resistant binoculars.  Waterproof binoculars can function even after being fully submerged, whereas water-resistant binoculars will only be able to resist water for a while and will not function after being in very deep water.

Water-tight binoculars are often sealed air tight and cleansed with nitrogen. This means that they are not just resistant to water but also to temperature changes in the atmosphere. This ensures that the magnified image you see through the binoculars is unaffected by the clouding of the magnification lens, resulting in a clear and sharp image.

Some watertight compact binoculars are buoyant, allowing them to float. This makes them easier to retrieve from any deep water environment so they are ideally suited to marine activities. Water-tight binoculars are now often coated with rubber armour for shock absorption. Not only does this protect the binoculars from being dropped but also helps to counteract the threat of salt erosion. Along with the rubber armour, some water-tight binoculars also have extra gripping on their surfaces. This is to ensure a firmer grip in marine environments so that the buoyancy feature is not used too frequently.

For more information and to view a comprehensive range of pocket binoculars, visit Sherwoods Photographic, a family owned company who specialise in telescopes and binoculars.

Binoculars Vs Field Glasses

Whether bird watching, or star gazing, a decent pair of binoculars always comes in handy. Some people are unaware that there are two different types of binoculars; prismatic binoculars and field glasses. Although the two terms are frequently used interchangeably, there are some fundamental differences:

Prismatic Binoculars
Prismatic binoculars are the most popular type of binoculars as they offer greater magnification in a compact package. However, the inclusion of internal prisms makes them less robust than field glasses. As the title suggests, they use a set of prisms within each tube which reflect light as it passes though, allowing a greater path length to show. This creates higher magnification, thus allowing the binoculars to be shorter and the separation of the objective lenses to be wider.

Field Glasses
Field glasses have no internal prisms that can be knocked out of alignment so their main advantage is that they are durable, making them a good choice for combative outdoor pursuits. They use both the objective lens (the large lens which captures light initially) and a second lens inside each tube, which inverts and reverses the image to make it appear the right way up. However, field glasses can only magnify an image by five times at best. The increase in size and weight needed to increase their top end magnification would make them far too impractical to use.

For more information and to view a comprehensive range of pocket binoculars, visit Sherwoods Photographic, a family owned company who specialise in telescopes and binoculars.

How Binoculars Work

Binoculars are hand held optical devices which magnify distant objects using an eyepiece, allowing them to be observed more closely.

The name ‘binocular’ comes from Latin, bi (meaning two) and oculus (meaning eye).In the most general sense, binoculars are just two telescopes joined together. But how exactly do they work? It is hard to describe any scientific process without sounding like a school teacher, so here is a very simplified version of what actually happens inside a pair of binoculars:

Remember that binoculars are just two telescopes? Well, at the end of each of theses telescopes is a large optic lens. Light passes through this lens, and an image is captured. The light then travels along the chamber, becoming magnified, so that the image appears much larger and closer than it is. The inclusion of a second lens at the eyepiece ensures that the image is then magnified further.

Because of the way binocular lenses work, this image at first appears upside down. Field glasses (slightly different to binoculars) use a second lens, further up the chamber to invert the magnified image so that the image will always appear the right way up. However, most popular compact binoculars these days use prisms. In these binoculars, a prism in each tube performs the work of the second lens more accurately resulting in a much clearer image and greater magnification potential.

For more information and to view a comprehensive range of pocket binoculars, visit Sherwoods Photographic, a family owned company who specialise in telescopes and binoculars.

Binoculars – The Basics

Binoculars are a very handy devices and an indispensible piece of equipment for many activities such as bird watching, camping and astronomy. However, people using them do not always understand very much about them, so a little extra knowledge can increase your enjoyment of using binoculars.

Magnification
In general terms, magnification refers to the viewing power of the binoculars. For example, a pair of 7×35 binoculars will let you view an image seven times larger than with the naked eye. Typically, the lower the power, the wider an area you can see and also, the brighter the image. This is most relevant when viewing at dawn or dusk. High-powered binoculars are most useful for viewing distant objects over open landscapes with plenty of light.

Aperture
This refers to the measurement of the objective lens i.e. the furthest lens from your eye. The objective lens draws in surrounding light in a similar fashion to that of a camera lens. The size of the aperture in a pair of 7×35 binoculars is 35mm. larger apertures allow in more surrounding light, but at the expense of an increase in size and weight.

Focus
Poorly focused binoculars can help to cause eyestrain, dizziness and headaches. Make sure that your binoculars are calibrated correctly before and after use, especially if you are lending them to someone else to use.

For more information and to view a comprehensive range of compact binoculars, visit Sherwoods Photographic, a family owned company who specialise in telescopes and pocket binoculars.

Hawk Trail Cameras

This week saw the first delivery of the Hawke PC5000 & Hawk PC2000 trail cameras. They are smaller than other offerings on the market making them easier to place covertly. Interested to see how they performed, I set the higher resolution Hawke PC5000 to run over the last couple of days.

I baited the area with peanuts hoping that the muntjac deer would make an appearance and giving me something a little more exciting than the rabbits that have previously made appearances on my tests with similar cameras.

This morning with some excitement, I connected the camera to a PC and success! 180 images on the SD card, admittedly some of me setting up but also rabbits, pheasants, partridge, munjtac deer and a fox. Admittedly I may need to hone my set-up skills a little more especially when it comes to baiting the area.

The day shots are as expected better than the night shots, as the one frustrating parts of this technology is that the exposure using the IR leds is fixed so as you can see from the images, if the object is too close you loose some of the definition of the features. That’s said for a first attempt I was pleased with the results and it certainly did what was requested of it.

I hope to be able to set up shortly at a badger set close to home so watch this space, I will post my images here if I get anything decent.

Astronomical Telescopes – The Basics

If you are new to the world of astronomy then you have picked a very good time to get involved. Never before has there been such an array of astronomical telescopes so widely available.

Of course, this can be a little daunting to the uninitiated, but learning about telescopes is just part of the fun? There are a few basic things to know about telescopes, and the most important feature of any telescope is its aperture. The aperture is the diameter of the main optical component, be it a lens or mirror.

The aperture determines the telescope’s ability to gather light and to see an image in fine detail (resolving). So what does all this mean? Well, with a six-inch telescope you will be able to see craters on the moon that are only a mile wide.

However, those same craters would appear twice as large in a three-inch scope. Okay..? Now point those same two astronomical telescopes toward a faint galaxy on a moonless night and see what happens. Compared to the three-inch scope, The six-inch telescope will gather four times the amount of light instead of twice as much, making the faint galaxy appear four times brighter in the larger scope.

Why so? Because the six-inch telescope has four times the area for collecting light than the three-inch scope. Confused? You will be…but not for long.

For more information and to view a comprehensive range of high power telescopes, visit Sherwoods Photographic, a family owned company who specialise in high power telescopes and binoculars.

Caring For Bird Watching Binoculars

As binoculars are likely to be your most expensive piece of bird watching equipment, it is important to take care of them. In order for them to stay in good working condition for many years to come, it is advisable to check and clean them before and after use.

Moisture
If your binoculars are not waterproof, avoid exposing them to marine or salt spray, as corrosive salt particles penetrating the unsealed components can be potentially damaging. If you think moisture has got inside, leave your binoculars in a warm place to dry, and make sure they are completely dry before putting them back in their case. Never try to open up the binoculars.

Cleaning
Exterior cleaning is best done with a lint-free cotton cloth or silicon impregnated cloth.
When cleaning the lens, try not to touch it as much as possible. Use a lens blow brush to remove any tiny grains of dirt, sand or salt that can scratch the lens and then wipe the lens gently with a lens cleaning cloth.

Alignment
Take every care possible to avoid dropping or knocking your pocket binoculars. The most common fault with a pair of binoculars is being knocked out of alignment. It is best not to try and repair this yourself, but instead take it to a reputable supplier who will be able to fix it on your behalf.

For more information and to view a comprehensive range of compact binoculars, visit Sherwoods Photographic, a family owned company who specialise in telescopes and binoculars.