Tiny Monocular / Telescope.

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British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,715
1,961
Mercia
I use an Opticron monocular. It lives in the pocket of my smock because it's so small but it's great for wildlife identification. Wouldn't be without it since even compact binoculars are too bulky for routine carry. That said if going out specifically to watch wildlife or shoot, I take binoculars
 

stevec

Full Member
Oct 30, 2003
548
144
Sheffield
The Leica that I have has decent eye relief for glasses users and an extendable eye cup for use without glasses. The quality of the coating makes a big difference for roof prism optics, more so than porro prisms. Of course, the optical resolution is determined by the size of the objective lens. It doesn't matter how much more mag you use, you still won't be able to resolve the details with smaller objective lenses as you will be able to with bigger ones.
 
Some years ago, I did a comparison between the Minox Macroscope 8x25 and Vortex Solo 8x25 monoculars. Both were very good, but different. The Minox had the edge on clarity as you would expect (it costs twice as much).

However, I found the view not to my liking as I wear glasses. The eye relief is quite short and putting the eyepiece to glasses gives that "looking down a smarties tube" effect. OK, thats a bit exaggerated, but some of the overal image size was lost. Although what remained was very bright, clear and pleasing.

The Vortex has a much longer eye relief and as such can be put to glasses without losing any of the image size. Image quality is not quite as crisp as the Minox, but its still very good. I also preferred the shape of the Vortex to hold in the hand. I also preferred the larger image, even though it wasnt quite as bright.

If you dont wear glasses, the Minox is superior, but you pay for it. If you do, then you need to chose your compromise. Image size vs clarity? In the end, I sold both as they didnt get much use. If I was buying again, then Vortex would get my cash.
good to know -- and a quick search showed me vortex seems available here :) (=i wear glases, too...) hopefully that's still the case when i've enough cash one day....
 

Charlie1956

Member
Nov 19, 2020
15
9
68
East Anglia
Looks suspiciously like an Amazon affiliate shopping channel website. :)
I don't see that at all. There are links to many places where the items are for sale and Amazon is just one of them. Also, quite a few of the "best" aren't even available on Amazon so what are you basing your suspicions on?
 

grizzlyj

Full Member
Nov 10, 2016
181
126
NW UK
Just to add to the mention of exit pupil size above, this also shrinks as you age.
If you feel inclined, you can take a photo of your eyeball while holding a clear ruler directly infront of it to measure your maximum pupil diameter. Or ask a friend :) You need minimal light to get maximum dilation obvs.
There is no point having a bigger exit pupil on your viewing device than you can achieve.
Having spent much of my life looking through surveying monoculars I can say looking with both eyes open has kept me out of the way of stuff nearby i wouldn't have seen coming with the other eye shut, and it exercises both eyes in a good way. Nowadays doing it a lot less and my right eye is becoming lazy.

As a super smashing great recomendation for a smallish bino the Pentax Papillio in either 8.5 or 6.5 by 21mm. They are certainly good for general use, we have the 6.5x, but their unique selling point is they focus at 50cm so can do super close up too. Until you have that capability you don't think about it, once you do, all sorts of things become amazing. 6.5x is good for young kids too.
 

swyn

Life Member
Nov 24, 2004
1,159
227
Eastwards!
I have looked at the Plastimo item and there are a huge number of these monoculars produced under different manufacturers names.
The other one is made by Minox and I am very tempted with this monocular but my old Monk 7 x 50 Argonaut bins are still very serviceable although bulky.
S
 

neoaliphant

Settler
Aug 24, 2009
736
226
Somerset
ive looked at loads of cheap chinese oem monoculars, ie same product different manufacturers as come sout of same factory, the clear optics of my hawke blow them away.
That said just got a canon sx740hs and the 40xzoom, with quite good 160x, works much better as a small monocular and awesome long range photos, the stabilisation really helps at long zoom, i often find myself using that instead
 

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