New to birding - advice on spotting scope (3 Viewers)

[Mykki]

Hi everyone,

I started birding recently and since there are couple of nice lakes nearby with bird towers I decided to get an entry level spotting scope.
I got Bresser Corvette 20-60x80 which is really quite cheap and looked really professional to my untrained eye. I just took it out for a spin and had very difficult time identifying even seagull sized birds 250 yards away. The 20x magnefication is okay, but at that level I'd rather use my 8x25 binoculars. When I go to 60x it's just mostly shapes with no detail. The weather was partly cloudy and very nice for birding.

My question is should I just get something else? I know I haven't spent much, but I thought I could identify birds of medium size from 200-300 yards away with ease. I don't know if Bresser is considered poor quality. Is there something else at price range 200-400 dollars that could give me much better quality?

 

[Kits]

Welcome to Birdforum.

 

[has530]

If you are in the US the Orion Grandview ED may be a good option? I got one and am happy for the price. The included zoom eyepiece is OK but it also accepts standard 1.25" astronomy eyepieces so you have lots of options to upgrade to whatever suits you best. I use a pentax xl 10.5mm which gives me about 33x on the 65mm scope which I have found to be the sweet spot for me.

 

[jring]

Hi,

first of all, welcome to BF!

The Bresser is a MiC plain glass scope (no ED glass) and is not expected to deliver a sharp image at 60x due to a) phyiscs and probably b) so-so quality control...


For $400 you might be able to find a decent used 50 or 60mm ED scope form a reputable brand... Nikon Fieldscope 50ED or Fieldscope II ED or III ED come to mind or Opticron MM3 or MM4 in the ED versions. Or small body Kowas in the ED versions (603/4, 613/4, 663/4).

The main prize would be a good example of Kowa TSN-3/4 (the best scope money could buy back in the early 90s - my cherry TSN-3 with a current Opticron zoom adapted is still so good even in a row off current alphas that I have not yet felt the urge to upgrade... and the body was less than 200€ with plus 250€ or thereabouts for the Opticron zoom... but of course a few years ago so might be more due to inflation).

Joachim

 

[Mykki]

Thanks so much for the replies! I will try to look into it more and maybe hunt for some deals.