Cameras and Lenses
Help please
I have recently taken to photographing birds and go out most weekends. My wife has now adopted the "If you can`t beat them, join them" attitude and comes with me.
My question involves getting my wife a pair of binoculars. I have little or no idea what I should be looking for except I do not want to pay a small fortune for a pair as it will probably be a fad until the cold weather arrives.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Hi John,
this is a surprisingly big question - if I can ask you a few questions first, maybe we can get the ball rolling.
Firstly - any thoughts about the price you'd want to pay? It's really useful to have a target for people to aim their advice at (no point recommending Swarovskis if you aren't keen on blowing £1000+! 
)
What kinds of venue do you and your wife visit? Bins that might be fine if you're generally in open spaces with decent light (looking over lakes and such on fine days for example) might be no good in dimly-lit woodland, where better light-gathering is important.
Is your wife likely to prefer lightweight, compact bins, or would she be happy with more substantial kit? At any given price range except maybe the most expensive, you get better optical performance from porro prism ("WW II" style) binoculars but there's more to them, weight and size-wise than roof prism binoculars.
Uou can get pretty good compact porro prism bins too - they're made "back to front"!
Fill in a few gaps John, and I bet we can come up with some good ideas.
Thank you very much Keith. I have just been looking around and found some Nikon bins at Warehouse Express. Nikon Sportsters ? As previously mentioned I think I should start with a reasonably priced pair as my wife has fads which may last, or may not ! I don`t think, I may be wrong, that she will be as keen on cold winter mornings to traipse round reserves peering through binoculars.
I suspect that she would prefer something lightweight to be honest. If possible I would prefer her to try some before buying but I don`t know any shops that might sell them.
We have recently been to Rye Harbour, very open, Pulborough, an absolute disaster, and we will be off to Stodmarsh in a couple of weeks which is also fairly open but has some wooded bits.
Can anybody shed any light, excuse the pun, on the light gathering properties mentioned by Keith please.
Thank you.