Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Spotting Scope Comparison....

I had my 10 year old nephew over today and he wanted to go "bird watching" which in reality means he gets to look through spotters and binos for the afternoon.

To encourage his interest in the outdoors, for Christmas I bought him a Brasser Safari 20-60x80 angled spotter as pictured below:



This is an entry level spotter that retails for about $140 over here, although I picked it up a bit cheaper than that.

The lad had been expressing an interest in telescopes and spotters for a couple of years and was always facinated when I gave him a chance to look through mine. However he is still not trust worthly enough to treat items with respect, and this meant although I wanted to buy him more than a toy spotter, I didn't want to sink serious money into an item likely to wind up broken when I was not around.

So far the Bresser seems to be filling the niche nicely. It's waterproof, functional and comes with a 5 year warranty.They also provide a nice stay-on case in the package as well.

So this afternoon we headed over to a local lake that usually has a good collection of waterbirds on it, plus a small cafe that sells ice cream, which apparently was another improtant consideration for a 10 year old!

Although it was very sunny, the wind was strong, so I opted to mount the Bresser on a heavy Manfrotto 055Nat tripod.

Additionally, I took my Nikon 50ED with the x27 eyepiece, along with a lighter more compact Manfrotto 190ProB tripod.

Setting up next to a seat on the side of the lake, the angled eyepeice of the Bresser was an advantage in that it enabled the scope to be lower and hence more stable, (particularly important given the wind) plus we could both use the scope without having to adjust the height each time.

I find using a straight scope more intuitive, but as is the way with kids, my nephew has adapted fine and has taken to using the angled eye piece of the Bresser with no problems.

With him set up and happy, I set my Nikon. Being a straight scope, this needed a bit more height and coupled with the lighter tripod, that did pose a few problems with "shake" due to the wind.

Looking at a wooden post sticking out of the lake 120m away, the Bresser afforded a good image at all magnifications. I could see even quite small marks/fine detail on the wood.

Things started to drop off just over 400m though. Generally the image was still very usuable, but only really sharp at x20. We were glassing the signs on the cafe at this point, and while lettering the size of car licence plate was readable, other lettering about half the size and thickness was borderline at all magnifications.

With the Nikon however the smaller letter was readable, although the shake from the wind did pose a few difficulties.

At 1100m, I was glassing a field with rabbits in. Both spotters showed there were rabbits there, but despite the lower magnification of the Nikon, they were easier to pick out and were clearer. Again, when using the Bresser, I found myself fiddling with the focus quite a bit, looking for "pin sharp" , but not quite finding it..

The other thing that struck me about the Nikon was the overall brightness of the image; it was noticably brighter than the Bresser even when the Bresser was at x20. Actually, I am not sure "brighteness" is the right term, the image in the Bresser just seemed duller and with less contrast.

As a general purpose spotter and at this price point, the Bresser is actually quite good. You would certainly be able to use it to find bedded deer out to a reasonable distance and determine if a buck had a "good" or a "great" rack. Plus being waterproof/nitrogen filled and having a decent stay-on case, its practical in terms of hunting use.

It would struggle trying to determine if a beast was a doe or a button buck, and probably like-wise when assessing the quality of horns on a sheep. The image in the Bresser also tended to be less sharp near the edges, especially at x60, but again, not to the degree the image was unasable.

The Nikon allows you to see finer detail at comparable distances, but being only x27 magnification, I suspect it may still be lacking for a dedicated trophy hunter. However given it small size, I do feel that optically it punches well above its weight and it offers the hunter a nice light, compact spotter that doesn't short change him too much on performance..The image quality is impressive for a mid priced scope and you have to be very critical to name any short comings.

Regards,

Peter