bigfellascott wrote:I've got Zeiss, Leupold, Jap Tascos and Nikon, I gotta say I really like the Nikon scope (3-9x50) it's been a real eye opener for me, it's every bit as good if not better than my $1300 Zeiss scope!
I've compared it to the high end Leupy VX6 and Swaro stuff and honestly, for me and my eyes I really didn't see a huge difference in performance, maybe slightly sharper clarity but really not enough to justify buying one for the $3k price tag I'll put it that way.
The VX6 Leupy had a wider field of view, was much a muchness brightness wise as the sun went down and last light etc, same with the swaro, i've compared plenty of scopes side by side in all diff light conditions and spotlighting etc to this thing and it's held it's own very well indeed which surprised the hell out of me considering it's price tag and the price tag of the others.
Just buy whatever you can afford Stix, I'm sure it will be ok which ever way you go.
There's no such thing as a free dinner
Nikon specialise in lens manufacture. There is something else to consider though; the less magnification the better. Given 2 scopes the same quality, a 3x scope (eg 4-12) will be better than a 4x scope (eg 4-16). Less complexity, greater light transmission, more robust. Zoom scopes will never be as good as a fixed magnification scope in the same quality range. Also, if you want parallax adj., an adjustable front objective is better than a side adjustment. An extra lens and added complexity is needed for side adj, whereas an adjustable objective is very simple, it just moves the objective lens in or out. So the leupy VX6 is 6x magnification; the nikon 3-9 is only 3x magnification. As well as that the nikon has a 50mm objective (more light). This means the nikon is still good at 9x in low light. If you're leupold is 3-18x40, then in low light you'd want to drop it to around 8x magnification or less. It's to do with our pupil size (average of 5mm); you divide the objective diameter by 5 to get your highest magnification for low light. 50mm / 5 = 10; 40mm / 5 = 8. After saying all this, I look for a 3x magnification with adjustable objective (if you want to adj for parallax). This could be 3-9x40, 4-12x40, 6-18x50. I'm not recommending it because it is the first scope I've owned, but I found the leupold mark ar mod 1, 4-12x40 with AO
https://www.leupold.com/scopes/rifle-sc ... -4-12x40mm or 6-18x40 with AO
https://www.leupold.com/scopes/rifle-sc ... -6-18x40mm They both get good reviews in the US. If you can go smaller, the Nikon Prostaff P3 Target EFR 3-9x40 AO has an awesome reputation for great quality at a cheap price. The crazy looking camel dude
recommended hawke; I did find this in my search
http://www.ausarms.com.au/links/product.php?id=41308 amazing value if it is a good scope.