ORIGINAL: GMMAT
First Dan....ya gotta know what sac riding is to define it (your post is a good definition
). Second....no...I'm not trying to get a rise out of him. Whena person asks a question in an information seeking thread.....and someone mentions that 8.5x50's are 100X better at low light gathering capabilities than 8x42's....I think a little clarification is in order. I'm also guessing the quality of your glass is a BIG factor in ANY of these optics threads.
In bowhunting situations....
I'm not even sure larger is better (in either the magnification of the FOV numbers). Someone mentioned Matt/PA being a pretty good resource on this. I'll defer to him for clarification of what I'm attempting to say.....but "bigger" isn't necessarily better for bowhunting.
Or I may just be too old to understand all the hyperbole you kids rap at each other with these days. Highly plausible.
Sorry for rapping about binocs?
The bolded statement made me laugh, they are INVERSELY related, one gets smaller the other gets bigger. So if you think less magnification is better, you in turn are saying more FOV is better. More magnification means less FOV. In other words, you HAVE to think bigger is better in one of the categories if you think less is more in the other.
Of course quality of glass is a big factor, that is kind of a given. I'd hope people would look for quality in every purchase they make. I do feel that once you reach a certain point (Nikon/Vortex), that IMO the price of the highest end models dont justify they improvement in quality.
Sure the $1800 Swaros have better glass than my set of $300 vortexs, but enough to spend $1500 more on? Not, imo. I'd say get the best glass you can reasonably afford, in a 8x or 10x, 40-50mm...you likely wont be dissapointed with any binocs in this range that are of good quality.
I retract all statements I have made to avoid any further confusion in NC. 42mm glass is far superior to 50mm for picking up light, especially in low light situations.My opinion that the science of bigger glass lets in more light, was completely wrong. I had it backwards it now seems.Not quite 100x better (have to speak literally on everything when avoiding confusion), but definitely superior none the less.