eitanaltman
Well-known member
For what it’s worth, the Kowa 883 is by far the dominant alpha birding scope that I see around here. 10-15 years ago it was Swarovski ATS with some Zeiss Diascopes, but the Kowa has taken over for most who can afford it. I see a few Leica Televids and a scattering of others.
Ive only seen the Harpia once, it was carried by a co-leader on a tour a few months back who is a Zeiss rep. It was nice, but didn’t wow me and seemed kind of clunky and bulky for my tastes (although it was a 95 not an 85). The wide FOV and adjacent focus and zoom rings is pretty cool, but the dual focus knob setup on the Kowa is my preference vs barrel MiJ ted focus. The Kowa 883 is amazingly compact for the huge aperture, which is a big advantage when you’re lugging it around.
I also spent tome a few years back touring a visiting friend locally and he had the Kowa with the 1.6x extender, he was able to get decent digiscoping shots with his iPhone at 96x. It was impressively clear with the extended mounted. Although personally I wouldn’t want to have 40x as my lowest available magnification for field use.
If high magnification is a priority then another option is the Meopta S2 with the 20-70x zoom. You give up the wide apparent FOV but you get a huge zoom range with a very usable 70x mag, the S2 optics are top notch as others have noted.
Ive only seen the Harpia once, it was carried by a co-leader on a tour a few months back who is a Zeiss rep. It was nice, but didn’t wow me and seemed kind of clunky and bulky for my tastes (although it was a 95 not an 85). The wide FOV and adjacent focus and zoom rings is pretty cool, but the dual focus knob setup on the Kowa is my preference vs barrel MiJ ted focus. The Kowa 883 is amazingly compact for the huge aperture, which is a big advantage when you’re lugging it around.
I also spent tome a few years back touring a visiting friend locally and he had the Kowa with the 1.6x extender, he was able to get decent digiscoping shots with his iPhone at 96x. It was impressively clear with the extended mounted. Although personally I wouldn’t want to have 40x as my lowest available magnification for field use.
If high magnification is a priority then another option is the Meopta S2 with the 20-70x zoom. You give up the wide apparent FOV but you get a huge zoom range with a very usable 70x mag, the S2 optics are top notch as others have noted.
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