Thanks for this review. I'm thinking of replacing my Nikon ED50 with the MM4 50mm at some stage as my travel scope because the (narrow) Nikon zooms don't work with my glasses. Your review covered all the details I'm interested in. Great stuff.
Hermann
It's been a long time since I looked through a Nikon scope, so I can't offer a comparison to it. Nikon's short eye relief always takes them out of the running for us.
Here's two points of comparison that I hope may help add to the brief description above:
I have a pair of Zeiss Conquest HD 10x32 binoculars. To me, the image in the Opticron/SDLv3 60mm is more crisp and sharper than the Conquest.
In terms of color fringing (CA), I think the level of CA I see in both the Conquest and the Opticron 60mm with the SDLv3 is pretty comparable. I can induce it in both around the edge of the field of view, but it is well controlled in both and I don't find it objectionable or intrusive in the Opticron. When the image is centered in the Opticron I don't see any CA. Again we are talking about looking at very high contrast objects: shadowed limbs against very bright white clouds, brightly lit Aspen tree trunks and limbs against the deep shadows of canyon walls, etc. Looking at the tail feathers of a male Mallard in full sun, there is a some CA visible around the white feathers backed by the black ones, but I am specifically looking to find CA. When I look at the Mallard and just watch it, I don't notice it - especially if the Mallard is in the scope's center of view.
Comparing it against our Pentax 65mm ED scope that has a fixed power TeleVue DeLite 11mm astronomy eye piece (~36x) is interesting.
To the best of my knowledge, both Opticron's SDLv3 and TeleVue's DeLite eye pieces have 8 elements in five groups. Both use high index glass which helps control CA. But the TeleVue is a fixed set of lens groups, while the SDLv3 groups have to move to zoom. The TeleVue DeLite has an eye relief of 20mm, while E.R. on SDLv3 ranges from 20-18mm.
Both scope bodies use ED glass on the objectives.
I think these two scope setups are more similar to each other than different.
I think the Pentax/TeleVue combination controls CA a little better than the Opticron/SDLv3. BUT... I think the Opticron/SDLv3 combination is slightly more crisp and clear. And I think the Opticron/SDLv3 setup handles the 40x-45x magnification range slightly better than the Pentax scope does.
The reasons we replaced the Pentax with the Opticron are:
- Opticron/SDLv3 setup provides a 15x-45x zoom range while the Pentax/TeleVue is a fixed ~36x
- Opticron/SDLv3 setup is water-resistant and the Pentax/TeleVue combination is not. The Opticron/SDLv3 combination also seals out dust better than the Pentax/TeleVue
- The Opticron/SDLv3 setup does all this while weighing 10 ounces less than the Pentax/TeleVue
So why didn't we just get a Pentax zoom for the Pentax 65mm scope? Because I don't think the Pentax zoom is as good optically as the Opticron SDLv3, and the Pentax 65mm with zoom weighs quite a bit more than the Opticron/SDLv3 combination.