It's often said here that the larger exit pupil you get with, say, a given model of fullsized binoculars vs. its midsized counterpart doesn't provide a brightness advantage except in the first few minutes of dawn or last few minutes of dusk (or in full dark, for astrononmical use), because when viewing under brighter conditions your eye's pupil is stopped down smaller than the binocular's exit pupil.
For those who prefer fullsized bins for general (that is, mostly daytime) use, do you find other advantages besides the "dawn, dusk & dark" performance that outweight the disadvantages of size/weight, cost, FOV that goes along with them?
Do you suscribe to Stephen Ingraham's notions that they perform better when viewing at long distances, or looking into shadowed areas?
Do you find the less finicky eye placement due to the larger exit pupil more comfortable?
For me, the big advantages of full-sized bins in daytime are (1) easy eye placement, including ability to rotate eyes off-axis to look around field of view, (2) generally better contrast, (3) greater mass and grip surface for a more steady view.
--AP
There are few birding binoculars sold with an exit pupil that matches our average 2.5mm daytime pupil diameter. Theoretically a small 10x25 compact should be all anyone needs. But I'd bet few, if any birders would choose these in a side-by-side test of brightenss with binoculars having 4-5mm exit pupils.
A larger exit pupil definitely makes a binocular easier/more comfortable in use. And as for brightness, most binoculars do not FULLY illuminate their exit pupils. In some, the illumination dropoff towards the edge is suprisingly severe and I think this is why despite the theory (more applicable to stargazing IMO) 4-5mm eixt pupil binos APPEAR to be brighter at least to my eyes. Moreover, any optical defects should be less apparent since you are predominately looking thru the central, fully illuminated area of the exit pupil. Finally, I'd like to think shade offered by the binocular eyecups lets our pupils dilate slighty larger when we bring them up to our eyes but I could be completely wrong since the dilation response might be affected more by direct light than indirect. Suppose one could test for change in their pupil size while looking thru a bino into a mirror.