For those unfamiliar with the story of the princess and the pea, here's a paraphrase from Wiki:
A prince wants to marry a real princess. He travels about the world searching for a real princess but returns home disappointed. One evening, a young woman claiming to be a real princess seeks shelter from a storm in the prince's castle. The prince's mother decides to test the validity of her claim by placing a single pea on a bedstead and piling twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds atop it. There, the young woman spends the night. In the morning, she tells her hosts she endured a sleepless night, being kept awake by something hard in the bed. The prince rejoices. Only a real princess possesses the delicacy to feel a pea through twenty mattresses and twenty feather beds. The two are married, and live happily ever after.
It's my opinion that many of our discussions (myself included) in the sport optics world really tend to center on whether we can feel that pea through twenty mattresses.
- 96% vs. 97% light transmission?
- Resolution at 500yds?
- FOV at 1000yds?
- Hue consistency?
- Recticle color under rare lighting conditions?
- Edge-to-edge clarity?
- Fringing?
Come on.
I pulled all of my rifles out today and had a look down the street at late dusk. The scopes were Zeiss Conquest, VX-II, VX-III, M8, FX-III, Bushnell Elite 3200, Bushnell Elite 4200, Nightforce NXS, Swaro Z6, and Swaro AV.
Yes, there were differences. Some were brighter, some were clearer, some had more magnification, and some had better eye relief.
But at 450yds -- the length of the street I was looking down -- I could read For Sale sign small text, see pine cone details, and watch sparrows pecking the ground for food...with every single scope in my battery.
For the practically-minded among us, when did we stop being hunters, and start becoming princesses looking for that pea in an otherwise perfectly good bed?
