A little while ago I went on holiday to France, taking my binoculars along, as would most people. Unfortunately, unlike most people, I came home without them. Now as only an occasional bird watcher but a life long entomologist I liked my last pair of binos because they would just about focus on dragonflies hawking along a river bank, so I put ‘close focus binoculars’ into Google. Well, 3 metres is a common distance quoted, some get down to 2 metres but in the search list was the Papilio focussing to half a metre, 1.6 feet in fact, for imperial fans!

Having read a couple of very positive reviews on the net I took the plunge and ordered. Right from the first look they have been a revelation. Out of the box and I looked at a cardinal beetle in the flower border, it was at about arms length and was for all the world like a sequence from an Oxford Scientific Films documentary. Far enough away that my shadow didn’t disturb it, it sat calmly cleaning its antennae and filled the view in sharp focus, magnified to 8.5 times.

Since then I’ve carried them everywhere and bored people galore. I find them invaluable to check out galls that are slightly too high on a bush, a real boon to count petals or look for hairs on a flower the other side of a ditch. Checking out the colour patterns on a damselfly sitting on top of a thick nettle patch is easy and less painful; basking butterflies don’t fly away yet you can see every bit of the colour pattern – in 3D. Also I can stand by a stream and watch flatworms, leeches or mayfly larvae on the mud at the bottom or check for pond skaters in the reeds.

Are they really that close focussing? I honestly can focus on my own fingerprint ridges with my elbow still bent. Recently I had cause to visit Ipswich museum and found I could read the labels under pinned specimens without having to disturb even the glass dust sheet.

Pentax Papilio comes in two sizes: 8.5 x 21 and 6.5 x 21 (8.5 and 6.5 being the magnification). I wanted the bigger magnification but was worried about how dark the image would be and thought the field of view would be poor (315 feet at 1000 yards vs. 393 feet for the 6.5s). However having taken the plunge I think it is worth having the extra magnification for the detail you can see and I can use them indoors so the light transmission is fine.

The Papilios are built with a special mechanism that allows you to get extremely close focus while looking through both eyes. This happens because the objective lenses converge as the focus wheel is turned. The Papilios are also very lightweight, have twist up eyecups, a pair of lens caps on the quick release neck strap, a tripod screw and a belt pouch.

One thing worth mentioning is that these are not waterproof. But this is a very minor inconvenience, they fit in my pocket if it rains, dragonflies and butterflies aren't usually out in the rain, so I wouldn't bring them out anyway. I would recommend these to anybody who wants to study nearby natural history in close detail. Obviously don’t choose them for serious bird watching or astronomy, but I would defy you to identify insects in your flower border a few feet away whilst lazing in your deckchair, you can with the Papilio! You may miss more than a few birds, but you’ll gain a better knowledge of entomology.

Pentax Papilio binoculars. Supplier: Amazon.com 6.5 x 21 £77.63, 8.5 x 21 £85.40 Delivery – free