Picking a Spotting Scope for Bird Watching

Video Transcript

"Scopes, like binoculars, come in a full range of models, with excellent coating, some with not so good coating; the numbers you want to look at, are the zoom factors on the eyepiece, and the size of the objective lens. Again, it has to do with how much light is going to reach your retina. The quality of the coating has to do with the quality of the image that you will see through the scope. You want to eliminate as much of the focusing in different planes, and the different light colors as possible. High-end scopes are expensive. They can go twenty five hundred dollars just for the eyepiece and the body, and then you need a good stable platform to put the scope on. If you have an excellent quality scope, and you have a very cheap, lightweight tripod, it's going to be shaking with the least little bit of wind. So you want a stable platform as well."