Miles,
As I just assured jeffbird, while the B&W chart isn't the only criteria for optical performance, it definitely carries over into overall optical quality in a scope, especially low light performance. I confirmed this many times after developing the night-time chart test, by performing the same test I used before: lining up a bunch of scopes in front of a picture window and having several people (not just me) rate them in brightness as the sun went down. The results from both tests correlated very strongly, so no, it's not "quite subjective."
And it's only ONE of the tests I make when evaluating any scope.
