I have owned one of these scopes for around a year. Due to a variety of circumstances, I am probably a 95% binocular user and a 5% spotting scope user, but still wanted a scope for those 5% situations when I am looking at field birds or over long distances, particularly with shorebirds or waterfowl.
After taking a good look around, I came across this scope - the optics seemed excellent (fluorite, large lens) and I was willing to take a chance. I'm very pleased that I did. Images are bright (large lens) and crisp. Chromatic aberration is absolutely minimal (ED glass) and only rears its head in nasty, high contrast, backlit, situations. While some have mixed feelings about zooms, I find them handy - first for locating the bird and second for grabbing that little bit of extra detail or color that can make the difference (even if the image will get wobbly for everyone under certain conditions - e.g. heat haze - at 60x)
If you consider a range of scope performance, I would rate this as considerably better than a cheap scope - but not quite as good as the top end scopes (subjective comparison vs. friends' scopes). Definitely a lot closer to the high end than the low end though - I believe that you see dramatically diminishing returns above this scope when you consider the multiples of price.
So, again, for me - with the occasional use - a great fit. I have the camera adapter, but have not used it. I also have not used it in heavy rain or very wet conditions - so cannot comment there either.
Perhaps the only downside is that it does not have the right name badge on the scope - if you would be self conscious about pulling up in a Toyota and parking in a row of Mercedes and BMWs then it's probably not for you unless you're birding alone!
Hopefully this information is useful to some - I am certainly happy with my purchase.
P.S. Get yourself a good tripod and head too - the scope is just part of what you need.
