Spotting Scopes

Rew

Id like one for a few different uses but shooting would be one of them. Iv seen cheap russian ones on ebay (20-60x80) for about €200

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=10955&item=7523309109

But are you asking for trouble with those? They seem very cheap for more brand name stuff state side, but what about here?

Citizen_Erased

I own a Seben rifle scope and bought it from exactly the same person. The scope seems to be of good quality and was excellent price. But I cannot really comment on its quality because I have never compared it to alternatives. One thing was though set at zoom 4 , nothing seems to be in focus at any distance, between 5 and 8 everthing is in focus at all distances and above that again very little is in focus. That may be an issue in what your after.

Rew

The spotting scope has a focus on the eye piece seperate to the zoom. Reckon ill go for it TBH.

Trotter

Mine just has the one focusing wheel on it.. Its well handy. It came from the lebanon.. I think lol

They were on sale in Bulgaria last week, on a stall where you could also buy roses and bracelets.

Kinda sums Bulgaria up really.

Citizen_Erased

My thoughts on them are simple - you get what you pay for. So , the idea may not be as good as it seems. Really though , if you want it then you should buy it and don't let me affect that.

Rew

I tend to agree and I dont have the money to spend on the expensive ones

From the info iv found its actully a grand scope. A friend is buying one so I get to check it out before I get one.

Sparks

Of course, one of the reasons these large objective lens tend to cost a lot (a 100mm lens 'scope goes for about £1000 sterling!) is that they're usually sold for birdwatching or the like, and have very good lenses to prevent chromatic abberation and that kind of thing. But we're just looking at a black-and-white target to find where the shot fell, so we don't need the same quality of lens as a birdwatcher will. So those cheap scopes may well be more servicable than you think. Which doesn't mean they'll be magnificent, mind - they tend to suffer from spherical abberation as well as chromatic abberation and it's the spherical abberation that affects the quality of the image sharpness - but they may be much better for what we use them for than you'd have initially thought.
e.g. look at the black circle of the aiming mark and you'll see a black circle with purple edges, so the colour's off - but the image will still be quite usable.

Citizen_Erased

I like watching wildlife down my scope

Rew

My only other worry is that it might be a bit fragile but thats true of most scopes. This guy hacked one to take digital shots through and the images look ok.

http://www.ornithomedia.com/pratique/equipemt/equipement_art41_1.htm

oldzed

I have a leupold wind river 12-42 power spotting scope I bought in the states for around 300 dollars and i find it excellent , even with posting and duty/vat you should have one over for under 400 euro and you would have a decent optic that should do you a life time .

demonloop

Slightly off topic.....

Shooting in Canada a few years back, fullbore, about 600 or 800 yards, can't remember the distance exactly.

I was getting a blur at the bottom of the black circle of the target, I could see like a brown blur underneath it. Thinking the scope was dodgy, I continued to shoot.

Next shot I fired caused an explosion of red and brown fur halfway down the range, the brown blur was a racoon type creature that had stuck his head up from his burrow!!

Poor bugger never saw it coming. Ever since then I've had a thing about staring far too long into scopes, even indoor!!

Sparks

Saw a neat idea over on 6mmBR.com today, can't think why I didn't think of it myself. Why not use an astronomical scope? They suggested a 102mm cassegrain made by Orion (BuyTelescopes.com lists it for $279, so expect to pay around that in euros by the time it's shipped to here), which can spot 6mm target holes at 600 yards, but is only a foot long - cassegrain telescopes fold the optical path with mirrors inside the telescope). Only disadvantage I can think of is that the image in astronomical telescopes is usually inverted because you don't want any more obstacles than is absolutely necessary between your eye and the image (which is usually very dim), so they don't put in the lens you get in terrestrial scopes to uninvert the image. But all we want to know is where the shot fell - if we have to remember that up is down in the scope, but we save a few hundred quid from buying an astronomy scope, I'd say it's worth it
Plus, anyone shooting at long range (over a hundred yards, really), is going to need at least a 100mm refractor for a 'scope - and that's a thousand pounds sterling right there, depending on where you buy. Reflectors (and cassegrains, which are just a type of reflector) are the cheaper option because the biggest optical element in any reflector is a mirror, not a lens (hence the name reflector), and those are cheaper to make. In astronomy, refractors give brighter images; but in daylight on the ground, where we'd use our scopes, that's immaterial, the image is tens of thousands of times brighter than astronomers are looking at.

Just an idea - though I'd be looking to buy that Orion scope if I didn't have a scope already.

civdef

You can get erector eyepieces to make the image appear right way up.

Sparks

civdef wrote:

You can get erector eyepieces to make the image appear right way up.

True 'nuff, though they're a nicety rather than a necessity for what we use these things for!

Rew

Got it today. Very nice bit of kit. Need a more expensive one to compare against but so far its very good.