You might think this strange, but I rarely use binoculars. I find them cumbersome and in the woods you don’t exactly have the opportunity to see any great distance. Conversely, the benefit of a good pair is that you can see even close up objects in more detail and you can look into dark foliage to see what’s there. As you know I also like to get quite close to animals as naturally as possible but at times, this isn’t an option.
My current binoculars are about 30 years old. I got them second hand and they certainly did me proud during the height of my bird-watching days. They are a pair of Carl Zeiss Jenoptem 8×30.
Carl Zeiss Jenoptem 8 x 30
When I signed up to go to Namibia (did I tell you I was going to Namibia?) my first thought was that I would treat myself to a new pair of binos.
Where to start? Luckily I have a birding friend who has a pair of Opticron Verano 10×50 so that was a good bench-mark for a modern pair and a comparison to my old Carl Zeiss. There was quite a difference not just in magnification but light gathering properties. The Carl Zeiss is a porro prism system (giving the binos its traditional shape) as opposed to the roof prism (straight shape) of the Veranos. The porro prism gives the Carl Zeiss binos a bit of blurring around the edge of the viewing circles. Roof prisms then were the way to go.
Opticron Verano 10 x 50
My next step was to go more up market and look at some higher end instruments. I had a look at my mate Maverick’s Leica 8×32. Very, very impressive with a superb sharp image but at £1,000 plus (new) they were out of the question. Binos are very personal and you have to try them out. One persons delight is another’s disappointment, so it’s no good saying that the more expensive the better. However, in this case I thought the Leicas were fantastic, but I just couldn’t justify the price.
I went back to the Opticrons and looked at a higher spec model. By all accounts (and reviews) the imagic was the better instrument than the Veranos although this was £80 over my budget at £380-00.
Opticron imagic 8 x 42
As luck would have it, my local bird reserve had an optics day and I travelled down to see what was there. Most of the binoculars were Hawkes, Opticrons, Minox and Bushnells and I tried them all.
I played with the higher x 10 magnification, but, as was pointed out, they are on the limit of a hand held stable image and a bit of wind would render them useless. In comparison, there wasn’t a great deal of difference in any case in my opinion. I also tried out a pair of the imagic 8×42 in direct comparison with my Carl Zeiss pair.
I made up my mind. The imagics were the ones for me. My plan was to buy them on line… until… what was that? Out of the corner of my eye I saw a group of second hand binoculars. And guess what? A pair of Opticron imagic 8×42 was amongst them. The pair was one version down from the current version with slightly less field of view and pull out instead of twist out eyecups. Apparently, there’s no other difference. The price was definitely right at £199-00.
I’m never that lucky. But today it looked like it was my day. After a thorough check for any defects, I gave the chap my plastic card, which he kindly gave back complete with a pair of Opticron imagic 8×42 binoculars. Job done!
Monday, 14 September 2009
In the depths of Essex a prisoner escapes…
On Friday I once again met up with Scrivy and old mate JP as we offered to help out Les and Brett from Wildcrafts run a course for some youngsters in the depths of an Essex wood.
It wasn’t too long before the fire was going, the hammocks were rigged (a nice open configuration to take into account the good weather) and we had opened a bottle of beer for a pre-course social.
The next day Les and JP showed the youngsters how to handle and sharpen knives and make some shelters.
It always amazes me the amount of effort and energy it takes to build a natural shelter. This must obviously be taken into account when you’re in a survival situation. When all is said and done, there may be alternative ways to build shelters and perhaps a lean-to with fire in an open front may be more cost effective in terms of energy. Personally, I’ll stick to a tarp.
Talking of energy, Scrivy kindly made me this brilliant flint axe. What a fantastic job and it will take pride of place in my study. Thanks mate.
The shelter building and fire making soon gave way to water filtering and food prep. Les has certainly got things right in terms of teaching the basic skills in order of priority. The youngsters’ rabbit prep was helped a long by the provision of a muntjac cooked “spit-roast” style on our side of the camp and provided the full complement of about 20 people with enough meat to go round with some to spare.
That evening I did a small talk and an exercise on night vision and light discipline in camp. It’s amazing how many people insist on wearing the head torch complete with bright white light on their heads instead of around their necks, thereby shining it into peoples’ eyes thereby obliterating any night vision they might have had.
I concentrated on using other senses in the woods not only at night but for use during the day as well. Instead of a picture of that, I’ll show you a huge Dryad’s Saddle fungus JP found and identified. The fungus is edible and the coin is a 2p piece (about 1 inch diameter.)
The next day the group was split into two groups. While Les took one half on a wild plant walk, I ran a man hunt scenario with a bit of tracking involved which seemed to go down well. Despite the dry ground and lack of substantial clues, both teams found the escaped prisoner before the helicopter came to airlift him away. Well, I like to pretend if no-one else does!
All in all it was a great weekend as usual. It was great to see the youngsters enjoying themselves in an open but controlled environment. I think there might have been a couple of adult converts as well.
Thanks for the visit.
Pablo.
Tags: kit
Welcome.
This is the home of Woodlife. You will find links to Pablos Woodlife (blog) the Woodlife Social Network (forum) and Woodlife Trails (courses) all on this page.
Be interested to have a look if we get to the woods next week. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours…..
Good purchase – you’ll be using them a lot in Namibia I expect!
…. also recommend bushnell binocular shoulder harness – cheap as chips at microglobe.co.uk (£9). Keeps the bins close to your chest so they don’t bounce around while you walk. Also good as it means you don’t strangle yourself each time you take your pack on/off!
Also recommend getting a spudz lens cleaning cloth – no surer way to ruin good bins than by using your shirt to clean the lenses (learnt the hard way!). They all have fancy coatings on these days so you need a proper soft lens cloth – spudz one you can clip to your harness so its always handy!
Sorry …… not helping with the saving money thing ….!
I’ts great when this happens, as you say, luck was certainly on your side on this one, though the drive down to the reserve meant that you’d made your own luck.
I’m sure that you’ll get a lot of use out of them, I’ll be wanting a look through them next time we meet.
They’ll come in very handy for your upcoming trip…….where is it that you’re going again?
All the best mate,
Steve.