It seems to me that the physics of optics dictate round lenses to be the most efficient for telescopes. This has been known for hundreds of years and will not change. Redfield pushed this with the ellipse to good effect. I feel there was nothing wrong with that approach, to trade a little efficiency for functional shape. If Redfield had advanced in the construction excellence and production efficiency that Leopold did, they would be here as an equal now.
If the lense is sliced, then it seems that some light would be lost at the input (50mm across is really 45mm overall or something). Throughput would be the same, yet there would not be as much to start with:) Slicing it on the bottom only (verses the ellipse) would reduce the cut in light by 1/2 and still lower the scope. This would roughly give only 1/2 of the "top heavy" reduction of the Redfield, though.
The Redfield was a much better looking scope. Why can't Leopold do simply a better job of building that shape?
There are obviously some reasonable limits to scope height, so thinning a scope does look appealing. The top heavy aspect could really apply to a very large scope. To get higher magification dictates more light must pass to achieve the same brightness as for lower magnification, so larger objectives and tubes are required.
I wonder though, how many of us really shoot a significant percentage of game at 400 yards plus?
Then there is this to consider. Up to a limit, dead zero distance is increased by RAISING your scope. This can very important if you hunt in generally thick areas that sometimes open to a 250 yard quick shot. Not having to worry about hold over on top of everything else can mean the difference between taking the game or not.
To me, the quality of light transmission is of paramount importance so that the size of the scope can be MINIMIZED. Then, I can raise it over my steel sights!!
