Binocular distance is an important consideration when choosing binoculars, especially if you are a glasses wearer or photographer. Choose the wrong eye distance, and it can ruin your comfort level of viewing through them. But eye relief needs to be done whether or not the correct eye distance is chosen.

Eye distance is expressed in millimeters. For comfortable viewing, binoculars should be spaced at about 15mm. If you must wear glasses when using binoculars, you may need a longer eye distance. An eyepiece is the lens closest to your eye. It is important to view the image at the correct eye distance because if your eyes are farther or too close to the eyepiece than needed, you will lose the outer edge of the image. That’s why it’s important for eyeglass wearers to get the right binoculars. Binoculars should be long enough to hold their glasses. Otherwise, it will be hard to see the whole picture.

1. Long eye relief

Binoculars come with an eye mask that you can pull or turn to shorten or lengthen the distance to work with your eyes and glasses. But if you wear glasses, you’ll need long-spaced binoculars. Make room for your glasses without letting your eyes stray too far from the eyepiece of your binoculars.

2. Short eye relief

Eye relief is not something everyone experiences. This is a problem that primarily affects eyeglass wearers, like the shooter mentioned earlier. Short eye distance is usually less than 13 mm. For people who don’t wear glasses, this may not be a problem. But you might feel like you’re looking at the whole field with your eyes.

3. What is good eye relief?

Most eyeglass wearers need binoculars with a minimum eye distance of about 16 mm. However, how much eye relief you need depends on your glasses and your face shape. If your glasses are small and they are close to your eye, you may choose binoculars that are only 15 millimeters away from your eyes. However, most eyeglass wearers need a longer eye distance than this.

4. How to get the right eye relief?

Binoculars are optical instruments with adjustable eye distances. When binoculars are 16 mm apart, eyeglass wearers can use them comfortably, but if you use the same pair of binoculars and the blindfold is unscrewed, the same eyeglass wearer will have to tighten their eyes to see the full field of vision. This is because when you unfold the blindfold, you lose some distance, and you are left with less than the required distance. Whether you wear glasses or not, to get the desired eye relief for yourself, you need to adjust the eye mask to a position where you are comfortable and can get the full field of vision.

Please note that you do not wear glasses, eye relief with binoculars is usually not a major concern. Binoculars with long or short eye distances will work fine for people who don’t wear glasses. If binoculars have a long eye distance, the blindfold can be extended to keep the eye at the correct distance from the eyepiece.

FAQ:

What is good eye relief on binoculars?

In most cases, an eye relief of 14 to 15mm is needed for the average eyeglass wearer to be comfortable. Ideally, though, you should look for binoculars and spotting scopes that have 16, 17, or even 18mm. Some very long eye-relief binoculars come with 20mm or more, which gives you plenty of room to maneuver.

Do binoculars work if you wear glasses?

Virtually all binoculars have several helpful features that allow them to be tailored to different users. Since eyeglasses hold binoculars away from the eyes and let in peripheral light anyway, retract the eyecups if you do wear glasses. Next, set the barrels of the binoculars to match the distance between your eyes.

What does eye relief do?

The eye relief of an optical instrument (such as a telescope, a microscope, or binoculars) is the distance from the last surface of an eyepiece within which the user’s eye can obtain the full viewing angle. If a viewer’s eye is outside this distance, a reduced field of view will be obtained.

Is it better to use binoculars with or without glasses?

For starters, if you’re wearing glasses solely to correct nearsightedness or farsightedness, you’re lucky. However, if you’re wearing them to correct astigmatism or some other condition, you’ll still need to wear your glasses.