Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Why has everyone gone ape over larger, i.e. 50mm, objective lens on scopes?

djpaintless,
Your answer is noted and might be true.

Dew

I took my scope outside today at high noon to "gather" some light. I capped the scope off at each end after I had "gathered" the light to save it inside the scope. I'll take it outside after dark and use the light that I "gathered" today. Should work if a scope can "gather" light

jwp, That can't work, not unless you hang a butterfly net in front of the picture window. That way you'll be able to catch the light you've focused on it. Just be careful that you don't burn the house down. BTW, whatever you do, don't look backwards through a scope or you'll ruin it. Your eye will pull all the light through it backwards and really mess up the lenses. I hear it can even suck the coatings right off from them.

Dick wagging!!!

Good point, thanks

While you were at it you should have also taken time to gather your thoughts. They have obviously leaked out or weren't properly gathered together in the first place. Or maybe you could gather some opinions though I'm not sure what you would hold them in.

Complete nonesense yes but so is your ridiculous parsing and misinterpetation of the word "gather"..............................DJ

Misinterpretation?

From Websters dictionary



No misinterpretation here, only if I said that a scope "gathers" light would I be Misinterpreting the word

jwp, You are trying to take one definition from many and have it mean only physical things. The word is obviously in common use to mean several other things such as the expression "gather may thoughts" etc.. You are smarter than this and are just being stubborn. Take a little time and let the truth set it and you'll see where you are wrong..............................DJ

I feel that I must correct you here Dew.It is now politically incorrect to use the word "gay" to describe people with homosexual tendencies.Homosexually is considered normal in all the larger metropolitan areas today and the use of the word "gay" is highly discouraged as being disparaging of ones sexuality.
So when your out in public and some strapping young man with a purple mohawk and a stud in his lower lip is staring at you azz with that certain gleam in his eye.Just remember,its ok for him to do so.And lets try to be alittle more sensitive to those who are homosexually inclined.
Fudgepackers have feeling too.
dave

dave7mm,

As old as I am at 66, I doubt that ANYONE male or female is interested in my azz.

Dew

look through a S&B and it is very apparent that S&B knows what they are doing. Look through one built by Meade and the difference is very apparent. I'll go with S&B here since they know what they are doing and Meade, well just compared them

Again just for you from the S&B web site




Surely you can grasp this..

Exactly to "gather" ones thoughts is to "collect" ones thoughts. To gather implies more. To gather light there would be more in the scope than "naturally available and that is not the case. To "gather" berries there are more in the basket and less in the wild and this is certainly not the case when using an optic. Optics can only transmit the light available not "gather" (collect it) it.

Compensating......

I prefer the 32, 33, & 40 mm.

I too thought the "gather light" comment was interesting. According to the "authorities" at Leupold and other scope manuf., scopes don't go out and gather light. They only transmit light and you can't transmit something that isn't there. 40 mm objectives will transmit all the light the eye can handle, so about all you get with a 50 mm objective is, more weight, more bulk and more expense.

What one's eyes can handle is dependent on what they can handle. There are a few of us up in years that can use a 7mm exit pupil. I've seen my Leica 8X42 binocular quit on me while my 6X42 rifle scope still worked. Same thing with a 40mm rifle scope set on 8X. If it gets dark enough, and if it does, it has always been well after legal shooting hours, anything with a 5mm exit pupil quits. I've never seen the night time conditions where a scope w/ a 7mm exit pupil wouldn't work.
What happens, though, is one looses the ability to see as far as they can with more light. This is where the 50's have an edge. Because they can use more magnification with the same exit pupil size, they can allow one to see further. Assuming your eyes can do this, of course. Many when they reach their 40's and 50's can't use a 7mm exit pupil when a 5mm quits.
I'm not a fan of the big 50-56mm scopes. Their tendency to shift zreo when impacted and their well known tendency to break down from recoil make them undesirable to me. To say nothing of their weight issues.
On the other hand, I hunt with light 6 3/4 - 7.5 lb. rifles w/o a bipod. The guys that prefer 9-13 lb. rifles with a bipod might see this differently. E

Absurd. What in the world makes you think that? How in the world can someone gather more than what's there?...................DJ

I can grasp that Schmidt und Bender and Leupold are wrong, the Encylopedia Britannica, Cornell University, Binocular manufacturers, manufacturers of astronomical telescopes and dozens of others are right.

I've taken the time to read S&B's statement, why don't you take the time to read a few of the other references that disagree with their conclusion. The Riflescope manufacturers are trying to make a point of it because one of their selling points is the % of Light Transmission. Other makers of telescopes use the term because it's the most commonly used and easiest to understand way to understand how a scope works...................DJ

Once again E chimes in with a well refuted and completely BS post. Some of the 50 and 56mm scopes are the toughest in the world, easily withstanding 50BMG recoil much less that of a sporting cartridge..................................DJ

The topic of which scope gathers - or collects- the most light seems silly when one considers that it is the light available at the entrance lense which ultimately governs the total light available to work with. Since a 50 mm lense will be more than 50% larger than a 40 mm lense in total area, as determined by simple math, it would seem obvious that a larger objective will provide, collect, allow to enter, gather - or whatever term makes sense- more light. Obviously a lot of things happen to somewhat reduce the quality of the light which actually reaches the eye. However, assuming that the glass and coatings on two different instruments affect the light in the same ways and to the same degrees, I would still place my money on the bigger objective providing more light overall. I think perhaps too much emphasis is placed on exit pupil size as the figure which allows light to pass (when maybe that actually affects "eyebox" more.) A lense or series of lenses can still focus the entire volume (minus glass and surface losses) of collected light into the same size area, regardless of objective lense size. If that is actually the case - and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, something I'd accept happily - then the larger objective will indeed provide, collect, allow to enter, gather - or whatever term makes sense- more light.

And I don't even care when it comes to scopes since I choose smaller for reasons other than light "gathering". (But I do appreciate what the bigger lenses do for binoculars.)

From NASA:
http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/glossary/l.cfm

"light-gathering (light collecting) power

The ability of a telescope to collect light. Proportional to the area of the telescope's objective lense or mirror.