ERGONOMICS - Close Focus

from

Midpriced Binoculars Round Up

by Michael and Diane Porter

We evaluated 56 mid-priced binoculars for Bird Watcher's Digest in the summer of 2007.

A few years ago, most binoculars focused no closer than 12 feet, and many were useless for anything closer than 18 feet.

Times have changed, and we can now get good binoculars that are useful for studying the hummingbird right outside the window.

Close Focus

Have you ever found yourself backing up so that you could focus on a butterfly, or on the birds at the feeder right outside your window? Sometimes you want to magnify what is close, so that you can appreciate tiny details, such as the individual feathers that make up the gorget of a hummingbird. For that you need a binocular that will focus up close.

Dan testing The binoculars in our study have a close focus ranging from 4 feet to 18 feet. The closest-focusing binocular we looked at was the Minox BV 8x42, with a published close focus of 3.9 feet.

Another binocular with a remarkably close focus is the Alpen Model 493 8x42, which focuses down to 4 feet. Unlike some close-focusing binocular, the Alpen 493 has a good overlap between the images presented to the two eyes. That makes for comfortable viewing even up close, and it avoids the squeezed-eyes feeling that comes with some other close-focusing binoculars.

A binocular that focuses even closer (but was not in our Midpriced Binoculars Round Up) is the inexpensive Pentax Papilio. It will focus as close as 18 inches!