Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Which one of these would be best in low light?

The most used scope in precision shooting competitions right now is probably Vortex Razor Gen 2 and not by a small margin. S&B and Kahles are probably followign with Nightforce definitely being in the top five.

Target shooting world is pretty much owned by March, although there are some others.

Nightforce makes exceedingly nice scopes with excellent mechanical quality across the board. For better optical quality, you ahve to step up to the ATACR line which is a fair bi tmore expensive than the scopes mentioned in this thread. Besides, the original question was pretty specific to low light.

ILya

Here's an invitation. If you ever get to Southern Oregon you are welcome to bring any optic you want and compare with what I have or can get a friend to bring by when you're here.


You posted "With all due respect, I have long ago stopped trying to figure out why you see things the way I see." I don't see things the way you see things. I see things the way they ARE!

Listen to this man, is my recommendation.

If you don't mind going down in magnification Leupold VX-5 3-15X 56 beat the z5 by six minutes.

Ringman, if that is indeed the case, it is something specific to your eyes. You may find a few guys to agree with you during a casual comparison but it won't stand up to a larger numbers of testers, varying conditions over time and repeated comparisons.

I spend weeks to months individually comparing pairs of the best glass and binos--because I don't have a lab. And compare my results with other guys that do the same. Six minutes is an incredibly long time with today's glass--an anomoly. Twenty years ago, maybe.

I'm certainly not calling you a liar, but extrapolation to the general population at your age and eyeballs probably isn't wise.

Added:
There are bad examples. There are different responses to coatings. If you spend a few months reading about visual stimuli and the amount of interpretation going on from the eyeballs to the back of the head, one gets a feel for how much the suggestion of another or an assumption can affect what we "see".

tomk has as good of a grasp on high-end/low-light optics as anyone I have ever conversed with. This guy knows his glass and carefully and methodically compares optics -- and in highly-varied conditions, as well. And I have been following koshkin's reviews for years and find them to be spot-on and unbiased. Between tomk and koshkin, there's a ton of experience and knowledge for which I have the utmost respect. These guys won't blow smoke and make vague or blanket generalizations. When they make a statement regarding optics, you can bank on it being an accurate assessment based on facts from in-depth comparisons along with years experience.

ILya...as always...thanks for you input

You guys don't seem to get it. I'm not the only comparing these optics. It has nothing to do with my age. I compared my Minox 13X56 with my Bushnell 6500 4 1/2-30X50. The one with the 50mm lasted two minutes longer than the two with 56mm objectives. It has to do with what is better. I traded the Minox 13X56 for a Minox 15X58. It blows them both away. In fact it is as good as the VX-5 mentioned above.



When I took the first Swarovski z5 5-25X52 and the Bushnell 6500 4 1/2-30X50 to two gunsmiths who are about thirty-five years old and forty years old they had different observations than each other. The forty year old couldn't tell any difference in the two. The thirty-five year observed when the sun went behind a cloud the z5 was brighter. When the sun was out the 6500 was brighter. There were moving clouds so we had lots of opportunity to do this. My observations were the same as his. I thought it was a dud z5 so I returned it for a refund and bought a second one. It was definitely not as good as the first. Same with the next one. The forth was about as good as the first so I kept it. To my chagrin I had to return it to service twice in two hunting seasons. Both times the note told me they had to replace the erector. Tell me how that has to do with my 20/15 vision in my left eye and ny 20/20 vision in my right eye.


[/quote]tomk has as good of a grasp on high-end/low-light optics as anyone I have ever conversed with. This guy knows his glass and carefully and methodically compares optics -- and in highly-varied conditions, as well. And I have been following koshkin's reviews for years and find them to be spot-on and unbiased. Between tomk and koshkin, there's a ton of experience and knowledge for which I have the utmost respect. These guys won't blow smoke and make vague or blanket generalizations. When they make a statement regarding optics, you can bank on it being an accurate assessment based on facts from in-depth comparisons along with years experience.[/quote]

Over the last few years I have purchased lots of optics trying to get something better than my Bushnell 6500. One time I bought a Minox ZA 5HD 5-25x56 SF PLEX. Its low light performance is no better than my Nikon 5-20X44. Neither are as good as the first three I posted about. No one pays me for my opinion like perhaps the optical engineer above. Anyone who wants to come to my house and compare optics is certainly welcome. I have the deer antlers 131 yards away in the woods and the optic chart 127 yards away. I learned the Nikon 7X35 ($125) are better than the ZenRay 7X36 ($375) on that optic chart.

Hey Bobby, thanks for the kind words. I certainly am no authority.

Koshkin has test equipment--that is kinda like cheating...:)

Early on in our conversations, you kept me from thinking I may be nuts when we compared notes and both reported seeing the same types of inconsistencies between what we had observed in low light optics use and general written dogma. John Barsness was also was a big help back back around 2000 when he returned a couple letters. People used to write letters...

My experience is limited to low-light comparisons for deer hunting usually no more than one hour after sunset. I do binos later for owls. Bobby Tomek has a photography background and is the guy to talk to about optics and hunting under any post-twilight to early AM conditions. He definitely has compared more scopes for low light hunting than anyone I know (without a laboratory) and under actual hunting conditions. I have learned much from him particularly on technical aspects from the photography angle.

Youth is indeed wasted on the young. One of the more appalling aspects with regards to optic comparisons is the narrowing of ability to make the same quality comparisons in low light. In the last 20 years I have noted a decline, even though I practice by walking around after dark to keep my eye's pupil more flexible. No doubt the aging process has more disadvantages contributing than just that. As such, I try to refrain from recommending specific instruments. Power bumps mated with an appropriate objective size and first rate low-light designed glass keep a guy in the running.

It's just money I suppose, but Doug's new offerings can be an issue...:)

For background: we went through this exercise with Ringman many years ago on OpticsTalk. It was a very circular sort of thing, but in the end it turned out that his eye pupils do not dilate in low light, so he generally gets no benefit from a larger exit pupil that you get at lower magnifications. There is also some sort of a neural issue with how his brain renders color. The rest of the stories about gunsmiths and all who saw the same thing, I am simply not buying. I have talked to too many people over the years about this and have measured too many optical devices. Sometimes, you hast have to call BS exactly what it is: BS.

I have never been to Southern Oregon and unlikely to go there within the foreseeable future. I visit Portland and Hood River regularly, but that is as close as I get.

I corrected the original statement. That was a typo. As for your last pearl of wisdom, and I quote: " I see things the way they ARE!".... This is so spectacularly ignorant, I am inclined to call it illiterate. I'll leave it at that.

ILya

You don't "buy" the facts of others' observation because don't accept facts. You claim things you don't know without ever meeting me. You bring up opticstalk. Is that where you used to change my posts? Isn't that the place where you change my profile to tell people I worked for Tasco; when I never have? And isn't that the place where you called me a "village idiot" because I proved you wrong about something so you banded me?

It never pays for a lawman to argue with a professional, especially an optical engineer.

You can say that again.

I agree that you see what you see.

I never changed your posts, although other people did.

I probably did call you the village idiot, but that was meant as an observation, not an insult. It could have been a response to your assertion that taller scope rings make the bullet trajectory flatter, but I do not recall now.

The rest is BS.

ILya

You truly are oblivious to some facts. When someone uses ad homonym it is because they can't defend their position with facts. That's why you called me the village idiot. If you didn't change my posts and you knew someone did, why didn't you correct them? Why?

I posted higher rings appear to flatten a trajectory when all else is the same. Barnes made the same discovery when they tested the same thing at the range. I will put a hundred bucks up here in front of God and everyone else to do the same test and come up with the opposite of what Barnes and I did.

You can do it quicker by just checking it on JB. After you do I will accept your, "I'm sorry. I was wrong," publically.

Back to the original question: Buy all three like I did and you will discover the same thing. I own three Bushnell 6500 4 1/2-30X50's. Two lasted as long as two of the Swarovski z5 5-25X52 and one of the Bushnell was as good as the two lesser z5's. The one Leupold VX-6 matched the two 6500's and two of the z5's. It was better than the other two z5's and the one 6500. None of them were as good as the Leupold VX-5 3-15X56.

I'm glad I'd already sipped my coffee.

That’s gay.

Quote of the day here.

Freudian slip..