Bird Binoculars & Field of View

One of the most important thing to look out for in a good pair of binoculars for birding is their field of view. This is especially important if most of your birding is done in forested areas or places with plenty of vegetation where a wide field of view will make it much easier to locate fast and erratic moving birds.

For those that don’t know, the field of view is basically the width of the scene that is in view when you look through your binoculars. Even if the magnification is the same, the optical structure of each model of binocular is not the same and how much view the pair of binoculars can pull into your eyes will be different.

The field of view is represented in a number of different ways but usually as a number of feet per thousand yards of distance or meters per 1000 meters of distance. It is also sometimes expressed as an angle.

As with most things there are usually trade off’s and a wide field-of-view eyepiece design often means reduced eye relief and a higher field of view often means a less powerful magnification. For bird watching in a large wooded area, using a wider field of view will be more useful than a high powered magnification and is why most of the best binoculars for bird watching tend to have a magnification of around 8x.

For more information and for full binocular reviews, take a look at this section on binoculars for bird watching on the Best Binocular Reviews Website.