Spotting Scope - ED or No? Celestron? (1 Viewer)

Hi, I'm trying to get a spotting scope. I have my eyes on the Pentax PF65 as it is ED and reasonably large aperture. I really want an 80mm scope due to greater possible resolution and light gathering but I just wonder if I'm splitting hairs.

Givens:
* I am obsessive about chromatic aberration. For those that have non-ED scopes, does this bother you? Do you wish you went ED? Or for those with ED, did you migrate from a non-ED for the reason of CA?
* I probably won't use magnifications > 40x. Do you experienced birders use higher mag?
* Don't want to rehash an overcooked topic but for angled/straight, looks like angled is the most preferred. Do you have any really big reasons to use straight?
* Anyone use the Celestron spotters 80mm or larger in ED or standard glass? How are they compared to higher end?
* For those with 65mm or smaller, do you find your digiscoping is highly compromised due to the smaller aperture?

I won't be doing a lot of digiscoping as I have lenses for that. But I do want to be able to travel light with a spotter and compact.

I just don't want buyer's remorse!

Thanks!

Matt

Bump ^^^

Matt_RTH said:

* I am obsessive about chromatic aberration. For those that have non-ED scopes, does this bother you? Do you wish you went ED? Or for those with ED, did you migrate from a non-ED for the reason of CA?

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There's only one way to avoid buyer's remorse, and that is for you to put the effort in to make sure your intended purchase meets your requirements. Nobody else can do this for you

As an example the sensitivity to chromatic aberration seems to vary dramatically from person to person. Many people see this only as a blurring. I remember when purchasing a scope I looked through a Leica APO vs non APO 62 - it took less than a second for me to reject the non-APO version out of hand. If I was going to spend all that money on a scope I was definitely not going to accept purple fringes of dark objects against light backgrounds. It still beats me how on earth they sell any of these, and I've seen enough of that in public scopes on reserves to assume it wasn't a one-off fault. My girlfriend who is a better birder than me couldn't see any difference until it was pointed out, and even then perceived this as mainly a difference in sharpness.

I don't know why this is different for me. Maybe it was part of my early career in aligning TV broadcast cameras, maybe my eyeballs have a different refractive index from normal issue humans. I hate seeing this distortion all too often on TV nature programmes too like Springwatch. You can't get the staff these days in broadcasting

However, the majority of the birding world seem to be blissfully unaware of this on direct vision and only realise the problem when they stick cameras onto their scopes. OTOH I now use a Zeiss 85 FL. Many people hate the falloff in sharpness of the zoom lens to the edge of the image at low mags. I see that, but I like the wider field of view. Others hate the particular colour cast - again, I see it but it doesn't trouble me. I accept these compromises because this works for me. FWIW I do use all the way to 60x mag on that often enough. Perhaps my fieldcraft just stinks, but how else do you get close to waterbirds out on rivers and estuaries? On a cheap scope you can't push things out that far because it all goes soft and smeary.

So you are going to have to do this work yourself. If you really are sensitive to chromatic aberration you will see it immediately as purple and yellow fringes separated from the object on contrast lines, typically dark bird against bright water/sky, even if you look at a top-flight non ED scope. If you don't see the difference immediately then maybe you can save your $$$$.

Matt_RTH said:

Bump ^^^

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Matt_RTH,
Excuse my being less than up to date with keyboard shorthand, but what does 'Bump^^^' mean?

narawood

It means he is impatient for an answer as he's seen it disappear from the header slot of this section after waiting a long 12 1/2 hours putting an almost empty post is a way of raising its profile, bumping it to the top...

Matt_RTH said:

Hi, I'm trying to get a spotting scope. I have my eyes on the Pentax PF65 as it is ED and reasonably large aperture. I really want an 80mm scope due to greater possible resolution and light gathering but I just wonder if I'm splitting hairs.

Givens:
* I am obsessive about chromatic aberration. For those that have non-ED scopes, does this bother you? Do you wish you went ED? Or for those with ED, did you migrate from a non-ED for the reason of CA?
* I probably won't use magnifications > 40x. Do you experienced birders use higher mag?
* Don't want to rehash an overcooked topic but for angled/straight, looks like angled is the most preferred. Do you have any really big reasons to use straight?
* Anyone use the Celestron spotters 80mm or larger in ED or standard glass? How are they compared to higher end?
* For those with 65mm or smaller, do you find your digiscoping is highly compromised due to the smaller aperture?

I won't be doing a lot of digiscoping as I have lenses for that. But I do want to be able to travel light with a spotter and compact.

I just don't want buyer's remorse!

Thanks!

Matt

Click to expand...

Matt,

I am very sensitive to CA and would never buy a non-ED scope.

I use a Nikon ED82 with a 30X DS eyepiece. Simple, elegant and the view is absolutely stunning. We're heading to Alberta for 10 days (5th trip) and the 30X is the only eyepiece we'll use. Yes, it's that good.

Angled is my favorite.

Good luck,

John

Thanks all.

Unfortunately these kind of optics are not common in my area so I can't easily test them for myself. I appreciate the validation. I'm probably going to go the single EP route to start as that is how one of the expert birders in my area does it and it is stunning.

WRT CA, I think the possible diff in sharpness would bother me more than a colored fringe. If that weren't an artifact of CA per se, it could be more due to cheaper optics.

Thanks again. BTW, is it not considered ok to bump a message on this forum?

ermine said:

It means he is impatient for an answer as he's seen it disappear from the header slot of this section after waiting a long 12 1/2 hours putting an almost empty post is a way of raising its profile, bumping it to the top...

Click to expand...

Thanks Ermine, understand now, and much apprecieated for taking the tme to reply.

Kind Regards,

John

Well I have the Celestron ultima 65mm (non ED) I can see the CA quite easily. Especially on white feather bird. I am consider getting a better spotting with ED scope or maybe a Catadioptric Scope. You can see my thread in here http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=89593 about my scope and a fuji camera combination.