What is the difference between a camera’s optical zoom and a magnification in a binocular?
Monday, January 25th, 2010 at
8:44 pm
For e.g. an 8x optical zoom in a camera and an 8x magnification in a 8x40 binocular?? Is there any difference between these 2, or are they the same??
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Tagged with: between • Binocular • Cameras • difference • Magnification • Optical • Zoom
no, they are not the same. When a camera says it has 8x optical zoom, you must first known the effective highest focal length. If the widest is 35 mm 8x that is 280 mm. A camera of about 105 mm is equivalent to about 1x of a binoculars, so 8x in binoculars is about 840 mm in a camera. It is not completely so simple as that though because digital cameras today are 10 meg pix and even more. That means that you can blow up an 4×6 picture into 8×12 or even larger. You do not see such a large picture through binoculars. In fact some binoculars have a somewhat restricted field of view. What I am attempting to say is that by blowing up the photo you might possibly get as large an image as you might see through the binoculars.
o_O WOOOW
It will depend a little bit on how much you are willing to pay and whether or not you can comfortably hold fairly large binoculars in your hands.
Lower magnifications (7 or 8 x) result in a brighter, steadier image while magnifications of 10 or higher allow you to see a bit more but will be harder to hold steady. Anything of 12x or higher will need a tripod.
However the size of the lenses (the second number in the size display) is the most important factor in astronomy, because larger lenses gather more light and allow you to see much more detail than small binoculars.
7×50 is often considered the best starting size because it is decent for stargazing without being too big to take on a hike for bird watching or other terrestrial uses. If you already have a smaller binocular for daytime use, you might consider going a little bigger on your astronomy binocular – a 10×50, 8×56, 11×56 or even 9×63 are all excellent choices if you don't have a tripod. My personal preference would be an 8×24 or 10×25 for terrestrial use and either an 8×56 or 11×56 for stargazing.
If you already have a good tripod you could get a giant size – 10×70, 14×70, 11×80, 16×80. But they are quite expensive, especially if you don't have an excellent tripod and need to buy one.
Always choose "porro prisms" for astronomical binoculars and make sure they are either "multi-coated" or better yet "fully multi-coated." And it is usually a bad idea to spend less than $100 on a binocular unless it is used.
Orion, Celestron and Meade all have a decent collection of astro binocs.
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