waynewallace
New member
I had the chance to test the 3 'top of the range' scopes at Pagham recently, courtesy of Kay Optical, who do field trips there on the last Sunday of each month. I want to upgrade my old Opticron, so eagerly went along to compare them, side by side.
The scopes were, Leica Apo 77, Zeiss 85 FL & Swarovski 80 HD, all angled and I had a good
hour or so, taking my time comparing how they all resolved various objects around the area.
I tested all threee scopes using both 20-60x zooms and also 40x ish fixed eyepieces.
For me, optical clarity is the most important factor, so I concentrated mainly on actual viewing, rather than the ergonomics etc.
The first thing that became obvious was that @60x, the Zeiss was noticeably sharper, which was a bit surprising considering how many rave reviews I'd seen on the Swarovski zoom but at lower magnifications, there really wasn't much to choose from any of them.
The other noticable feature was that the Zeiss had a definate YELLOW cast, which at first was almost obtrusive.
I have read Andy's review on the Zeiss but there he mentioned a slight BLUE cast, so I was a bit surprised, to say the least - has any one else encountered colour casts on the Zeiss?
It's my birthday in a couple of weeks and my other half is treating me to what ever scope I desire, so although I was pretty sure that the Swarovski would be my choice, I am now leaning
towards the Zeiss, primarily due to it's apparent sharpness at higher magnification.
I'm a bit concerned though over the seeming lottery over colour casts...
The scopes were, Leica Apo 77, Zeiss 85 FL & Swarovski 80 HD, all angled and I had a good
hour or so, taking my time comparing how they all resolved various objects around the area.
I tested all threee scopes using both 20-60x zooms and also 40x ish fixed eyepieces.
For me, optical clarity is the most important factor, so I concentrated mainly on actual viewing, rather than the ergonomics etc.
The first thing that became obvious was that @60x, the Zeiss was noticeably sharper, which was a bit surprising considering how many rave reviews I'd seen on the Swarovski zoom but at lower magnifications, there really wasn't much to choose from any of them.
The other noticable feature was that the Zeiss had a definate YELLOW cast, which at first was almost obtrusive.
I have read Andy's review on the Zeiss but there he mentioned a slight BLUE cast, so I was a bit surprised, to say the least - has any one else encountered colour casts on the Zeiss?
It's my birthday in a couple of weeks and my other half is treating me to what ever scope I desire, so although I was pretty sure that the Swarovski would be my choice, I am now leaning
towards the Zeiss, primarily due to it's apparent sharpness at higher magnification.
I'm a bit concerned though over the seeming lottery over colour casts...