I am a little surprised, given the obvious depth of knowledge on here, that no one has mentioned DEPTH OF FIELD. To me, this is one of the most important characteristics of a pair of binos, particularly for panning around looking in the woods. I'm not really sure what all affects the depth, but I know that it is usually less at higher powers. So I don't like anything over 8x. I have an old pair binos made by Bausch&Lomb for the US Navy that are only 6x. Individual eyepiece focus. Old, mostly uncoated glass I suppose. But I love them because they can be set to be in-focus from about 20ft out to infinity. I have a decent pair of Pentax 8x compacts and some decent Burris 8x that both have wonderful clarity, but both require fiddling with the focus a lot when panning around. It's another reason to try your candidates out NOT inside the store.
- Jay
Depends what you are trying to do with them. For hunting and especially elk hunting, I prefer binoculars with a narrower field of view.
Hunting elk in the timber after they have bedded for the day is probably one of the hardest ways to hunt elk. But most times that's where they will be during hunting hours, except right after sunrise and right before sunset. On some public land and when the moon is full they may never move any real distance in the day.
Fortunately, early in my elk hunting career I hunted with an old codger who really knew elk. (Well he was in his late forties and to a guy in his twenties that was OLD!)
Hunting with him was excruciatingly painful. He walked like a crazy man in the dark up mountains and to a guy from sea level there just wasn't enough oxygen to go around. Then after he announced the elk had already moved through and that death march I just endured was in vain, he would set off after them, me in tow.
He had an old pair of Zeiss binoculars and they pretty much never left his face, even to eat. Yes he would lower them when he walked but he never took more than three-five steps before looking through them again. For a god -awful long time I might add!
We would walk for a ways until he thought we might be close and then he really got serious. What he did was look at everything with his binoculars. He was looking for part of an elk and using the narrow focus of the binoculars to pick those parts out.
He showed me how to scan in "layers" and how the focus could be used to blur foregrounds and backgrounds to make things stand out. It's a very systematic way to cover an area and a great way to look into the depths of the forest. It's easier to pick out things and less strain on the eyes.
We got a few elk together and a few years later I used that technique to take my first elk by myself.
IMHO for rifle scopes and looking at the Grand Canyon, depth of field is great. For searching out something in particular in the woods, closer focus is better.