A good pair of binoculars is a must for many professional photographers, or anyone who wishes to get closer to any type of action, such as car racing, horse racing and bird watching. They are almost a necessity for the hunter, fisherman, sports fan, and experienced traveller.

Binoculars are also incredibly useful to help find that special shot. But with so many pairs available, and all described in technical jargon, it is sometimes hard to know which pair will suit your needs best. We’ll start with the basics; when looking at binoculars you will be bombarded with numbers and letters which can often be confusing if they are not explained.

Secondly, you can often get many letters after the magnification and exit diameter, these include, WP, HG, CF, IS, AW, and many others. Look out for those with either WP or AW in the name as these ones are either weather, or waterproof however, don’t be fooled into thinking you can drop them in the sea, generally they are not completely waterproof and will break if dropped into deep water.

However marine binoculars are made for those who spend time on boats and therefore have added waterproofing.

HG is Nikon’s high grade binoculars which are made out of better quality optics and are generally more robust, which are perfect for those viewing wildlife and racing.

CF simply means close focus which is useful in museum.

IS is image stabilisation, the same as digital cameras, which is particularly useful for the higher spec binoculars such as those which have a magnification over 10x.

Another puzzling aspect of binoculars is the prism type. There are two types, Porro prism and roof prism. Roof prisms are in a straight line inside of the binocular tubes, and they tend to be inside of compact binoculars, which make them ideal for those requiring lightweight binoculars. They generally have two pivot points between the tubes. In terms of image quality, roof prisms can give equally good images as Porro. However, if you are looking for image quality and compact design you must opt for the more expensive roof prism models.

Porro prisms are the traditional offset tubes design, where the objective lens is not in line with the ocular lens. The Porro prism design is usually optically superior to roof prism models, particularly in the medium price bracket; however they tend to be quite a lot larger and heavier. They have a single pivot point between the eyes and are therefore very easy to adjust to your eyes. Not all Porro prisms are created equally however, BAK-4 prisms are the best as they are made of superior optical glass that produces clearer images and are often used in binocular models such as Eschenbach’s Adventure series.

Another issue of binoculars is eye relief which is a problem often encountered by those who wear glasses. For best eye relief look for binoculars with eye relief of 14mm or longer (17mm if you have very thick glasses). Another option is to opt for binoculars with rubber eyepieces that can be rolled back, which allow the eye to sit closer to the lens.