Why astro scope designs are great value spotters
While it's true that some of the astro scopes are a bit too large to compare to totally integrated spotting scopes and none are waterproof, they all have upright images with correct right/left orientation using various erect image prisms. I do use a Nikon fully waterproof fieldscope when it is raining but since my view is restricted to about 20m maximum and rain spatter on my objective lens reduces quality further, the number of times I use it is limited. Televue scopes are notoriously heavy which is why I have a Takahashi flourite FC50. My Tak weighs 2 pounds with the erect image prism and eyepiece and is 18 inches long. In it's case it easily fits in my pack and it's lighter than the Nikon/Kowa/Fujinons by far.
But if I want to do shore viewing I have a 104mm/F12 zirconium oxide coated Bausch and Lomb Criterion 4000 spotting scope. Schmidt Cass spotters are basically closed systems and this one weighs 22 ounces with a graphite housing and aluminum eyepiece holder. It's as sharp as anything else I've seen except the Takahashi and easily stays sharp and clear to 150x-170x which helps allot when trying to get "close" to shore or marsh birds. It's also totally color-free because it is mostly a set of mirrors. It's all well and good to have a waterproof scope in case you drop it. I prefer a waterproof case that floats in case I drop the B&L spotter. The scope is super-light, sharp, color-free, and its Pelikan case is light and totally waterproof and floats.
On our ranch we have a seasonal frog pond. The Missouri River (300m width here) is about 2-3km from our ranch. Marsh and river birds love to come feast on the frogs (this May/June will be great). We have viewing blinds set up with comfortable chairs about 50m & 100m from the pond because the pond can vary greatly in size. You can easily see various birds down to 10cm in size with binoculars, and you can identify closely related species with spotters up to 60x. But you can read the color codes and sometimes some of the lettering on banding on many of the long legged birds if your scope will stay sharp to 150x-200x. Some intergrated scopes go out to 100x-120x but they aren't very sharp at that magnification.
I agree that if I'm birding in a place with iffy weather all the time, I'll take a waterproof scope (usually rubber armoured). But if that's the case I have many pairs of superb waterproof binoculars that are even handier to use. One thing people don't seem to mention about waterproof spotters is that dropping one will often damage a lens or scratch a coating on the objective lens. I've seen many quality spotters with dislodged eyepieces, so having a waterproof, plastic foam lined case would make real sense. If you have one of these cases then a Celestron C-5 is a great choice (with an erect image prism of course). Getting various 70-80 degree or long-eye-relief astronomical eyepieces is inexpensive and they are very light weight. Since my B&L4000 is only a 102mm aperture and the C-5 is 127mm, people in my groups tend to ask for "looks" through my friends' C-5s and not my smaller model. There really isn't a good way to make a truly high power, light weight, waterproof spotter. So while the Zeiss, Leica, Swarovski, Meopta, Nikon, Opticron (made by Vixen) waterproof spotters are very nice for viewing backyard feeders, and in really bad weather, they are really always comprimises.
Short tube refractors and Schmidt Cass scopes will usually allow for much greater sharp magnification and many are lighter in weight than integrated spotters. If the weather is really bad then rain spatter is the image-quality limiting factor. And trekking with a trippod heavy enough to properly support a waterproof high-power spotter is much more of a limiting factor than the scope iteself. We use Gitzo graphite tripods and even these are heavier than the Schmidt Cass scopes in waterproof cases.
For short distances, binoculars are better. And if you are trekking a scope to some far-away place to use after it may get wet, then a waterproof case of nearly form-fitting size, carrying a lightweight Schmidt Cass spotter will usually be more satisfying. The variety and quality of astronomical eyepieces (and their pricing) allow the birder to get tremendous enjoyment for their money. 25 years ago when I began serious birding and astronomy, there were allot of limitations in anything except military or boating binoculars. I bought the Spacemaster because of the eyepiece system but I also bought a Nikon Fieldscope 60mm because it was waterproof. Some Kowa, Fujinon and Zeiss spotters performed even better than the Nikon or Spacemaster but when waterproof cases became available at low prices, I got Schmidt Cass and short tube refractor spotters that easily outperformed the best integrated spotters.
Of course a Takahashi 90mm objective short tube flourite refractor costs $6,000, so it isn't for everyone. Even the Tak 60 or a Televue is many thousands of dollars (I dislike Televues because they are so heavy). But a lightweight Celestron C-5 is only $400 in the USA with great eyepieces and an erect image prism. In fact you can get a wide array of long eye relief eyepieces for $40-$50 each. With a 5.2mm long eye relief eyepiece from Vixen, on plains where it is hard to approach birds but the air is still, 240x is easily reachable.
I've always been surprised that people disregard lightweight short tube refractors or Schmidt Cass scopes for birding. Visitors to our ranch usually want to use the Nikon Fieldscopes or Spacemasters or Kowas and other integrated spotters when they start. But then when they find changing eyepieces difficult and the magnifications low, they realize that most spotters are just big monoculars. Since we have 30x80, 25x100 waterproof and 20x80 waterproof binoculars with various tripods, most people dump the spotters after an hour or two. then they can switch to hand-held binoculars if they sit in a forest blind to see wild turkeys, foxes or owls. If they watch the frog pond, feeders, berry trees or field birds (we keep 2 horses in a hillside one hectare pasture and birds pick out bugs the horses dislodge or sometimes they probe the droppings) visitors often prefer either the short tube refractors or Schmidt Cass scopes, which either allow for either high power, super-widefield views or great digiscoping.
I love some intergrated spotting scopes like the Diascope and Televid or even the new Meopta, but they are usually poor values for the money compared to astronomical based spotters. I don't even much care for the Maksutov style spotters from Questar, Celestron (especially the C90, the 3.5 etc), Meade and "The Chinese Maksutovs", because their color correction is just "average" unless they make a multiglass corrector lens. I have owned a 700mm Questar and an INTES Russian Maksutov spotter that were well corrected and could reach high magnification but the INTES Mak was very heavy (all steel eveything, and must have weighed 10 pounds) and Questars cost as much as our Takahashi (which is lighter weight and has a sharper image even though it is only a 400mm FL).
There are some new ultra-cheap Chinese 90mm integrated spotters that are incredible values at $150 delivered. A few are even waterproof for about $300. But these are more like super values for beginners and not super-high quality scopes for serious bird identification. We've had our ranch for 4 years now and it has such a wide spectrum of birds and foxes to view that it's a real test for optics. We have a creek and pond/marsh in a low valley, forests and hillsides with fruit trees and horses. We've put up a variety of squirrel-proof feeders around the ranch too. We're near a very large river, hundreds of hectares of open pastures and forests and we're on the migration flyways. There are even bald eagles that roost on the river but visit our ranch when they migrate each year. Less than 2 miles away is a large state wildlife preserve with a 10 hectare lake. We really test our optics in real life use here. We have no mountains or deserts nearby but our family went to the Mojave and the Rockies at Christmas and we loved digiscoping and birding.
Nothing I say is absolute, but in 25 years of enjoyable birding, we have found that we like mid-sized waterproof binoculars, high power binoculars and short tube refractors and Schmidt Cass spotting scopes on tripods best, and they cover all the possibilities better than any one integrated spotting scope. This is all for fun so the "most fun for the price" factor should be considered too. But just don't disregard light weight astronomical spotting scopes with waterproof cases to get great image quality, high magnification and easy digiscoping at a reasonable price.
Swissboy said:
You are basically talking about astronomy scopes. No doubt about their optical qualities. However, they are definitely not everybody's bag when it comes to birding. Not waterproof, often reversed image, big and cumbersome.
