"Being blind is awful. View range is important not only for gameplay, but also for payouts because of all the spotting damage you could do."
I already suggested you to buy the binoculars retro and as soon as you can afford it the v2 version. I know that 1.2M credits is a lot with the low tier rewards, but once you do it the cost of passing it to a new tank as you get to it is only 0.3M as you can sell it for 75% of its value and buy it for the tank you begin to grind/use as money maker.
Given the number of battles it needs to get the credits to buy the next tank if you don't use premium time, and it will be more then 50% longer when the credit income bonus will not be there as the fixed costs, like the respawn one, cut part of the income, on the long run I am convinced that you will grind faster credits and xp. In the screenshot you show us i see only 6 spots and 1.7K spotting damage, with it you could have gotten much more, you can not compete vs a dakadaka with the T72 as damage done, but it is not difficult at all to get a big share of spots and spotting damage, sometimes i even rank better then them with my MBTs or low potential damage tanks only because i have that 30 more meters of view range, not vs the ones driven by good players, but a lot of crap ones get good results with them.
Even in the worst case in that mission you would have probably ranked in the middle, also because you have to be less over cautious if you at least can spot who fires at you, getting about 20% more credits. Do yourself the math, but remember that my suggestions are based on personal experience as i still remember so well when i was grinding trough the low tiers, sometimes without premium time and even now, that i have only to grind some crew of tanks that anyway i don't like much at those tiers and I have more of one year of free premium time to activate sometimes i like to play those tiers only for fun, cause i am bored to play always high tiers, and sometimes I don't activate the premium time when I don't need to really grind something as all the commanders i care of are colonels and i have plenty of credits and enough reputation, so i perfectly see the difference between the low tier tanks with or without binoculars. Thing that you can easily check by yourself using your main account, buy the binoculars for the T72, if you don't already have it, play twice 3 different missions then unequip it and repeat the same missions, then compare the results, and also and mainly compare the fun you have with it with the constant stress of being blind.
We often forget the the main reason we play (but very few professional players that earn a living playing and probably play other games and not AW) is to have fun, not to grind or the pride of being the best ones, pride of which nobody cares in not a bunch of other very competitive players, it is not like winning a gold medal in the Olympic games...