It arrived the other day, cost was less than $17 including shipping.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Hunting-Camping-Armoring-Upgrade-16X52-Dual-Focus-Telescope-Monocular-BK4-Bird/390721959881?_trksid=p2045573.m2042&_trkparms=aid%3D111000%26algo%3DREC.CURRENT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D27%26meid%3D3989407942724283135%26pid%3D100033%26prg%3D1011%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D4%26sd%3D251258274902%26

It does exactly what is says it will do, and is surprisingly easy to hold steady enough for my purposes. I can’t hold it very well with one hand, but with two hands pushing against each other with the monocular in the middle it’s quite satisfactory.

It has a very narrow field of view, a sharp focus, and accommodates my “reading” eye quite well. I have two eyes, one of which works well and longer distances and the other at shorter. Combined, I don’t need glasses either for reading or driving. And I’m 73.

Anyway, the Bushnell is an interesting toy, not what I want for night vision, and will order the Barska 9 X 63 in the near future. I have high hopes for that.

I can recommend some light reading for you: “Visual Astronomy of the Deep Sky”, by Roger N. Clark, (Cambridge University Press/Sky Publishing Co). It’s 300-plus pages of how telescopic optics interact with the human visual system, both the detector itself (the human eye), and the image processing software of the cerebral cortex.

And don’t worry about matching the exit pupil of the telescope precisely to the pupil opening of your eye. If the light cone of the scope is bigger than your pupil, you can still see just fine, its just that you are not fully exploiting the dim-light performance of your glass.

This is going to happen anyway when you use your glass in daylight, where your pupil is contracted, not fully dark adapted. In some cases, this can even be an advantage, because you don’t need to line up your eyeball precisely with the optics to avoid vignetting (that annoying donut of fuzzy darkness lurking just past the edge of the field of view).

You can use a 7×50 fine in bright daylight, it just doesn’r work any better than a 7×35. But a 7×50 in the dark shows you things the 7×35 can’t see at all.

I don’t think this will get that far from my van, to be honest with you. I have some superb backpacking binoculars and monoculars. Or good enough.

I found these – http://www.meritline.com/70cb-10×70-wide-angle-binoculars-black—p-38181.aspx?source=fghdac&gclid=COrtsPOc2bsCFaE1Qgodz3MA_Q

What with there being no way to determine how much of that 63mm or 70mm gets to ones eye, it gets confusing. About this time I usually decide I can’t tell what is and isn’t appropriate, and decide the hell with it for another year or so.

The eye relief is under a cm. That wouldn’t bother me, I don’t mind getting up close, but most people might find that uncomfortable, especially if they have to wear glasses while observing.

The exit pupil is 6.3mm, not the 7mm I’d expect from dividing 63 by 9. There may be a perfectly valid reason for this, I’m not knowledgeable enough about optics to know for sure. But it might be that the objective is stopped down so you aren’t using all of it. This is a tactic sometimes employed to make the image a little sharper, by masking out the parts of the lens figure (the outer edge) most likely to introduce distortions. The price you pay is loss of dim light performance. The result may be satisfactory, but it means you’re paying for glass (and carrying extra weight) you’re not using. I.e., what you actually have is a 56.7mm usable objective.

I know this happens because I have a small spotting scope that was built this way. Since I got the scope for deep sky observing, I could afford to give up a little image sharpness for greater dim-light performance, but I guess the manufacturer was going after the birdwatcher market. I paid for an 80mm f/5 lens, I got an effective 70mm f/6. Maybe that’s why I got it cheap.

Still, this may not affect performance for your purposes, and at this price its nit-picking. Still, you get what you pay for. It costs more money to grind lenses perfectly all the way out to the edge.

There is one more consideration: Although this sounds like a great astronomy and surveillance glass, it is bulky. You’re not going to be packing this baby out in the bush. It’s going to stay back in the Land Rover.

http://www.barska.com/Blackhawk_Binoculars-BARSKA_9x63_BLACKHAWK_BINOCULARS.html

The eyepieces are grooved as if they have a variable focus, and I’ve never seen even the cheapest (<$10) which didn't have that.

Interesting, the light gathering capability of the 63mm v. 50mm is 158%. That's a big increase.

I hadn't found the Celestron 9 x 63 binoculars, and they are, I'm sure, far better. However the price difference is $75 v. $175. If I were to spend the latter amount I would probably spend a bit more and get a Gen 1+ night vision scope.

I think it's relatively easy to stabilize binoculars. Tension from a string around a belt is a pretty good one absent a tree limb, car hood or someplace to rest an elbow or two. I used to take 16mm movies when I was an investigator for a private company, even had a 15" lens on a modified rifle stock with a fitting for a tripod. Impossible to hold that steady freehand, even drunk. One's heartbeat would show up. Sometimes I used a pillow across a car trunk on which to rest it, and if I held it too tightly or planted my cheek into the stock too hard it jiggled a bit. Mostly I used a tripod, small or large depending. I had a love-hate relationship with it, loved the results it got, hated the tension that sometimes went into using it. And sometimes it was nice if there were a stable scene to have the security of distance. One could relax and let the lens do it's job.

If one is out to observe an area at length clearly a tripod is in order. I have both tall and short ones, I think three in all.

One thing I noticed about the Barska. From the illustration, it appears there’s no way to individually focus one eyepiece (both eyes rarely focus identically). This could be a problem. Also, there doesn’t seem to be a full list of specs on this guy (close-focus point, field of view, eye relief, weight and dimensions,etc). Bak-7 prisms is good, so is the fully multi-coated.

I would go for the Celestron 9×63 instead, in spite of the higher price. It is a well known company with a good rep. You’re less likely to get burned, and will back up their product if it arrives damaged or out of adjustment.

An outfit like Orion or Celestron has a good return policy, and good customer service. I’d be leery about buying something like this on the Net from an unknown company. There are some bargains out there, but caveat etc.

The physics of light dictate that the low power limit of a telescope is around 0.2 times the objective diameter in millimeters. If you are young and your pupils dilate widely, you can push this a little lower.

The high power limit is 2 times the objective diameter. So for example, my 100mm
aperture refractor has a practical magnification range of between 20X and 200X. You pick different magnifications by changing eyepieces.

In general, you want the aperture/power ratio between 7 and 5 for dim light work. Some vendors sell an 8×40 configuration that would meet your requirements. 9×63 is also popular with astronomers, although a bit heavy to carry in the field.

Oriontelescopes.com is a good place to shop for binocs, they are reputable, and their customer service people know their product and give good advice.

Monoculars are a bit harder to find. Here is the model I have, the same one you looked through in Pompano.

http://www.hawkeoptics.com/hawke-nature-trek-10×50-monocular.html

The Hawke comes with a nifty little table-top tripod which is useful for leisurely, detailed observation. My criticisms of it are

1) it doesn’t come with a place to attach a carry strap (although the belt pouch does)

2) it doesn’t have a lens cap for the eyepiece end (although it has a very good one for the objective lens).

3) The focus range is wide, that is, it doesn’t quickly “snap” into focus, it takes a little practice to get the image sharp. The focus is very sensitive to distance. The plus side is you can focus on an object only 8 feet away, an advantage for nature study.

Hawke sells a lot of other optical gear too, including binoculars.

PS. If you are astigmatic and need to wear your glasses while looking, you need to shop for a model with a large “eye relief”, i.e., the distance of the eye from the eyepiece, to accomodate your spectacles. Good optics publish their eye relief with their other specificationss. If you are just presbyopic (near- or far-sighted) eye relief is not much of an issue, because you can compensate with the focus.

I can’t believe I’m the only person who would be interested in that combination, but it’s proving to be a challenge.