I'm not considering myself as an active birder, but I am interested in birds in general, and Eagles especially. Where I live we have mostly White-tailed Sea Eagles and Golden Eagles.
Now I am in the process of buying a scope, and I have a Nikon Spotting Scope 80A with the 20-60x zoom eyepiece (called Sky & Earth in the US, I think) on loan. I should rush in to say that I'm unwilling to spend a huge amount of money on this, and the Nikon fits the bill quite ok. The contender in this price range seems to be a scope called Opticron Classic IF-2 MT with a 18-54x zoom. This is a bit more expensive, but I can live with it if it is better than the Nikon.
I have not (yet) been able to look at (and through) the Opticron, but my neighbour has a Swaro AT80HD that I can compare to.
I find the Nikon to be very sharp, even at 60x. The field of view is quite good, but not in the Swaro class, naturally. The only thing I'm not satisfied with is the level of chromatic aberrations. A bird on a roof with the sky as the background will have relatively heavy fringing surrounding it. I am not going to use the scope for digiscoping, so I can live with it, but I'm wondering if anyone has tested the Opticron and can tell me if this scope suffers from the same problem? Both of these scopes have normal glass.
My dealer is willing to send me the Opticron on loan also, but I'd like to know if I should care or just keep the Nikon.
Best regards
-Øyvind
P.S: If you're interested you can watch a few of my pictures on a Norwegian photo critique site called foto.no:
White tailed Sea Eagle:
http://foto.no/cgi-bin/bildekritikk/vis_oversikt.cgi?brukerid=2193&serieid=3067
Golden Eagle:
http://foto.no/cgi-bin/bildekritikk/vis_oversikt.cgi?brukerid=2193&serieid=4503
Now I am in the process of buying a scope, and I have a Nikon Spotting Scope 80A with the 20-60x zoom eyepiece (called Sky & Earth in the US, I think) on loan. I should rush in to say that I'm unwilling to spend a huge amount of money on this, and the Nikon fits the bill quite ok. The contender in this price range seems to be a scope called Opticron Classic IF-2 MT with a 18-54x zoom. This is a bit more expensive, but I can live with it if it is better than the Nikon.
I have not (yet) been able to look at (and through) the Opticron, but my neighbour has a Swaro AT80HD that I can compare to.
I find the Nikon to be very sharp, even at 60x. The field of view is quite good, but not in the Swaro class, naturally. The only thing I'm not satisfied with is the level of chromatic aberrations. A bird on a roof with the sky as the background will have relatively heavy fringing surrounding it. I am not going to use the scope for digiscoping, so I can live with it, but I'm wondering if anyone has tested the Opticron and can tell me if this scope suffers from the same problem? Both of these scopes have normal glass.
My dealer is willing to send me the Opticron on loan also, but I'd like to know if I should care or just keep the Nikon.
Best regards
-Øyvind
P.S: If you're interested you can watch a few of my pictures on a Norwegian photo critique site called foto.no:
White tailed Sea Eagle:
http://foto.no/cgi-bin/bildekritikk/vis_oversikt.cgi?brukerid=2193&serieid=3067
Golden Eagle:
http://foto.no/cgi-bin/bildekritikk/vis_oversikt.cgi?brukerid=2193&serieid=4503