Binoculars For Those Who Use Eyeglasses

Binocular eye relief is usually necessary when you wear a pair eyeglasses.

Manufacturers will design the binocular eye cups to position the binocular lens at just the right distance in millimetres from your eye. Unfortunately, they don't mark this kind specification anywhere on their binoculars.

Because - what if you wear eye glasses? If your eyes are not at the proper distance it will definitely affect your field of view. You end up having "tunnel vision" - a situation where your field of view is narrow and distant and the image you view it not as large as it should be. Many people try to hold the binoculars at a distance from their glasses but this makes them very hard to hold and very unsteady. In these cases you need to extend the eye cups [if possible] to create that proper distance from eye to lens with your eyeglass surface in between. If you happen to have glasses that have thick lenses or frames then you need binoculars that have a longer eye relief or the ability to extend the binocular eye cups even more.

Since binocular manufacturers don't label the eye relief distance so you have to figure things out for yourself, usually by testing them. You can go by some simple rules of thumb:

-if your glassed are small and close-fitting then eye relief covering 14 mm t0 16 mm should be about right
-if your glasses are thicker and farther from the lens in the way they fit then try 16-20 mm in distance


Lower prices binoculars usually have rubber eye cups that fold down but more expensive binoculars usually deliver some kind of telescoping or adjustable eye cups. You might see a trade name such as "twist-up" or maybe "pop and lock". The good news is that you can get some quite deep rubber eye cup that can offer relief for just about any distance problem created by having to wear eyeglasses...along with comfort.