Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Leupold fixed 6 question?

Whoa! Very interesting!

Royce I tend to see parallax at 300 yards with mine but it seems to have disappeared at 400-600 yards.....can anyone figure this out?

Bob,

Beyond the distance where the scope is set to be parallax free, the parallax seen by your eye tends to get less and less significant the further you go, and gets more significant the closer you get to the object. That is why a scope that is what I assume to be parallax-free at 100 yards shows more parallax at 300 yards than 400-600 yards. It would also show a significant amount of parallax at 10 yards, even more than you see at 300, if you sat down and had a look.

Not directed at you, but I often see people incorrectly assume that parallax gets worse and worse the further from the target you get. In reality, the image converges on the objective lens from whatever distance the object is at and the angle of convergence becomes smaller and smaller the greater the distance to the object, and the amount of parallax grows smaller and smaller as that angle decreases.

One way that you can think of parallax that is often easier to visualize than a riflescope's internals, is your eyes. Your eyes have parallax by nature, since they are seeing the same object from different angles. If you look at an object 6" in front of you, and close your left eye, and then your right eye, the object appears to be in a drastically different position when viewed with each eye. But if you look at an object 100 yards away with each eye in succession, the object's location does not appear to be significantly different when viewed with each eye. This is because the angle of convergence between the object and your eyes is great when it is 6" away, and very small when the object is 100 yards away.

BobinNH
My WAG is that the scope has it's parallax set for 400 or 500 yards. I suspect that not a lot of quality control goes into the parallax settings at the factory because nobody but me and three other whackadoodles pay any attention to it.
It puzzles me that so many people fret about heavy reticles being too imprecise because they cover one minute of angle, but three or four MOAs of parallax doesn't concern them

Fred,

I tend to be just about obsessive about checking parallax, especially in new scopes, and at various ranges. The worst I've seen was an in expensive 5-15x Euro-scope that, oddly enough, didn't have ANY sort of easy parallax adjustment. When set on 15x the parallax was over a foot at 400 yards.

I have to guess that your scope was accidentally set wrong at the factory. Right now I have eight 6x Leupolds, mostly 6x36's but also a couple 6x42's. One is on a 6.5x55 that I loaned to a friend's daughter to hunt with this fall, her first season, and one is at Leupold. Five of the six that are here have NO detectable parallax at 350 yards, the longer distance I normally check at, since that's about the range to the water tower from one of our upstairs windows. The other has about an inch, which I don't worry about. All of these are straight from the factory.

Jordan/Fred/Mule Deer: Glad you guys are around to discuss this stuff and Jordan thanks for that detailed explanation!

I just got back from the range and shot a pair of 7mm mags at 300 yards, both equipped with 6x36 Leupolds. I was thinking of this thread as I wiggled my head around and watched the parallax through both scopes, holding on a 3" orange dot against a black target (contrast). I could watch the dot dance around, mostly vertical,and it was related to cheek weld, i.e. if I got sloppy with my head the dot danced low and if I snugged into the stock the dot was in the right place....I expected all this as I have seen it many times.

Anyway my first shot at 300 yards from the Mashburn hit the orange dot, the second about 2" away,where the rifle and scope has been putting them for the last 5 years and it has been that long since the scope was adjusted. I know it would have put them where they need to go at 400-600 as well since I have run the drill many times.

The rifle and scope are now getting to the point where I trust them. Parallax or not I think I will just leave well enough alone.

I wonder if you did send your scope in to have the parallax adjusted to 400 yards...If the second would hit the orange dot too?

WBill: The second one was so close,it wouldn't have mattered...but maybe!

Oh I know it's close enough....BUT...What if??? Always crops into your head doesn't it? LOL

6x42, matte finish, wide duplex w/ M-1 elev turret for the win. No need to fugg with the parallax.

At 300 yards, who needs a turret?

Besides turrets have nothing to do with parallax.

MD, just out of curiousity, what's the 6x42 at Leupold for?

I wasn't particularly careful about those two sentences. The one on the 6.5x55 and the one at Leupold are 6x36's. The one scope is at Leupold because it didn't seem to be adjusting correctly.

Why the wide duplex?



P

BobinNH
You listening to me about guns and/or scopes is like the Pope asking Bill Clinton for advice about celibacy.
But, back to parallax, I suspect having reduced parallax helps on those field shots when you are hanging upside-down by your toes from a limb on a Ponderosa pine shooting one handed across a canyon while Sasquatch is stealing your lunch, and cheek weld is the last thing on your mind. Happens to me all the time.

Fred

Fred the thing is, I see parallax at the range...but don't remember noticing it when the reticle is hanging on an animal.

Is that because I am concentrating on not falling out of the tree?

I do know it can affect our groups...

Wide duplex sux ballz.

As does Leupold for ignoring what consumers want.

I bought a 8x40 FXII, box marked Duplex, and it had a WIDE duplex.

Really, who decided at Leupold gloss fixed scopes get duplex, and matte get wide?

JB, did you miss the latest video on scope break in?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRRahHX9Zkg

The ones who wanted to make money off of hunters who would return their scopes for a reticle change!