Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics 56mm VS. 50mm scopes. Are they really much brighter?

Optically, a Zenith 3-12x50mm is hard to beat in resolution and low light performance(compared to the 50mm Zeiss and Swaro). It's heavy though and not cheap. You can't go wrong with a Zeiss or Swaro 2.5-10x50 either. Overall I like the Swaro the most(as a construction, weight and optics combo). If you buy any of those three, 50mm will be fine and the mount wont be as high as a 56mm scope. If you want the brightest scope you can get, get a fixed power 56mm one.
Aicman

Too much is made of this also. Unlike shotgun shooting where gun fit is critical, rifle shooting is more mechanical and a decent rifleman should be able to adapt to a higher scope mount. I've got scopes mounted in heights from low leupold dual dovetails up to swarovski rails with the 56mm objective and I shoot the same with them all. I don't buy that you have to have a certain cheek weld to shoot a rifle well, it hasn't been my experience.

That is your opinion,my opinion differs greatly.If you have to shoot quickly in a hunting situation,a proper cheek weld certainly does help in obtaining the proper eye/scope alignment necessary to find the target in the scope quickly,steady the crosshairs on the target,and reduce parallax to a minimum,in order to make a quick ,accurate shot.I also find recoil much easier to tolerate with a proper cheek weld.

TC1,

Some have brought up the 56MM as too large because it needs to be mounted high. I am having a custom rifle made. The stock will be wood with a high cheek piece because I want to take advantage of a high mounted scope.

Run the numbers though the ballistic computer with your hunting load for a scope mounted 1 1/2" above the bore and one mounted 2 3/8" above the bore. It's like gaining 100 feet per second over the one mounted 1 1/2" high.

Many British & European shooters, myself included, tend to use a more upright head position on the stock and generally have no problem with 50mm or 56mm scopes. This assumes the stock "fits" correctly and the comb is of the right style and height..I could agree that a lower scope allows for my cheek to be in fuller contact with the stock, but even with an upright head position, I can still get enough contact to achieve a decent stock weld and keep my head in a more natural upright position. I also suspect a more upright head position makes things a tad more comfortable when it comes to felt recoil as well...

Having said all that, I did notice someting the other weekend which could explain the different perspectives on the issue. I had a try of a friends rifle on which he has a 50mm Leupold using a Pitcanny (sp?)rail and Warne mounts. The rings and mounts were way too high for this particular scope and I defninately had problems getting a good cheek weld..I also noticed that the issue was compounded of the long eye relief of the Leupold. Basically because my eye is that much further back than I was use to, and because my cheek weld was less than solid, I found it very difficult to keep my eye consistantly centred looking into the ocular of the scope .

No doubt had I spent some time with the rifle, I would have gotten used to it, but it made me think that scopes with longer eye relief do make the issue of cheek weld more critical and perhaps thats why many American shooters who favour Leupold have a different perspective on the subject to us Brits and Europeans..

Regards,

Peter

I agree with your calculations about exit pupil, however, I read somewhere that the human eye cannot use an exit pupil higher than 4.5. Does anyone have any definitive information about this?

Kevin,

I was always under the belief that the maximum was 7mm for somebody in their prime with perfect eyesight and that it got smaller as you aged, to typically about 5mm..

Having said that, a scope with a slightly larger exit pupil than the human eye is still advantageous as it gives a margin of error with your critical alignment...That of course has to be balanced with the fact that if your eye is not centred looking at the exit pupil, any parallax issues will be compounded...

Regards,

Peter