My favorite scope is a S&B 1.5-6x42. It takes very little light for that scope to be all I need. A partial moon will do, a town within 15 miles and a low cloud deck will do. I could hunt all night under those conditions with it. This scope has a FFP reticle andit is a modified German #4. The combination of FFP with that reticle means I can see the treticle well in very, very low light and I do not need illumination which IMO just makes it more difficult to see the target. I have never looked through an alpha 8x56 in very low light conditions, and I cannot imagine how much brighter it can be. I have tried my S&B, my Swarovski, Zeiss and Meopta scopes all in 1.5-6x42 4-5 hours after dark looking at rabbits in a tree line at about 50 yards. They were all up to showing me the rabbits well enough that I could see the eyes, ears and head that I could head shoot them did I want to. There was some ambient light like I described above.
I prefer those scopes because of the bottom end 1.5x. It is common for me to need that to deal with close deer in brush where I just have to stay on them until I get a clear shot. Shooting at moving deer in that king of conditions is much, much easier to do it right with little or no magnification. To even use 6x in very low light conditions I need a lot more time, even with that outstanding FFP reticle. If I had more open country to hunt in I would for sure have an 8x56 from one of the alpha companies.
Miles58, my experience is the same as yours. Must be my eyes but my old Swaro 1.5 x 6 x42 seems better in the low light test than my S&B 1.5 x 42. I am able to see back in the woods clearer and farther than other scopes in a text I did recently. One thing I learned, while the ZA5 Minox 2 x 10 x 40 is surprisingly bright and clear and one would think it is close to the the Alpha's during the day, it literally falls flat on its face in low light and the Alpha scope keep going strong well after the Minox is unusable. My Zeiss monocular at 7 x 50 though works well past legal deer hunting and that is what got me to re-visit the 8 x 56. The hogs in South Texas seem to have an internal clock that put them out in the open just past legal shooting time, 30 minutes after sunset. This happens consistently. If the 8 x 56 is better at low light than a variable power alpha scope due to fewer lenses, it would be worth the switch and also give me an excuse for building another rifle to accommodate the height of the big honker scope.
I have an old fixed 4 x 36 fixed power S&B that is most likely the clearest, brightest scope I have and it performs extremely well in low light. I have yet to find a scope significantly better than this old 4x and if you ever find one used, I would seriously recommend buying it. Problem is now, just not enough power for my old eyes. This is what got me to thinking if I could get 8 power with that kind of brightness and clarity in low light, it would be the cats meow.
