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Review of the Brunton ICON 25-50x 80mm Angled Scope (1 Viewer)

henry link

Well-known member
The Brunton ICON 25-50x 80mm scope I ordered from Botach.com arrived yesterday. The foam lined Brunton scope box had simply been wrapped in a plastic shipping bag and there was no Botach paperwork included. Fortunately, I haven’t detected any signs of damage.

Weather is poor here, so it will be Monday before I can really start my normal outdoor tests. Here are a few initial impressions for those who are thinking of moving quickly while these are still available for $599.

Normally indoor tests at 30 feet would be good enough to reach conclusions about resolution and aberrations, but this scope has an odd behavior at close range. Many scopes show somewhat higher spherical aberration at close distance because the spherical correction is designed to be optimum at infinity focus, but I’ve never seen SA increase as dramatically at close focus as it does in this scope. It’s unacceptable (about ½ wave) at 30’ and gets worse at the closest focusing distance of 15’. I haven’t yet conducted a proper star-test at long distance, but I can see from comparing it to other scopes looking casually at distant objects from my deck that the image improves considerably at distances above 100’. This behavior might be explained by a unique objective design. There is a fixed triplet up front, but it is combined with a positive focusing doublet. Every other scope I’ve seen with a focusing lens has used a negative doublet.

On the plus side, longitudinal chromatic aberration at any distance is extremely well corrected, well enough for me to suspect that the “SD” glass is probably one of the Fluorite equivalents, like Ohara FPL-53. But, on the other hand the 25-50x eyepiece is afflicted with a large dose of lateral CA, fortunately not impinging on the center of the field, but quite vivid on high contrast edges by about 1/3 of the way to the edge.

I can say at this point that the eyepiece does have a nice wide apparent field, about 55º at 25x and close to 80º at 50x. Off axis sharpness is adequate, but not impressive. The eye relief is quite consistent over the zoom range, about 20mm from the glass, 16mm from the eyecup rim.

I’ll post in more detail later (which might include some revisions to these initial impressions), but for those who are thinking of buying one from Botach I would say that this is certainly no $4000 scope, with the possible exception of longitudinal CA, which is very well corrected. While I've seen specimens of alpha scopes that were worse than this one at long distances, I think its real optical competition would be Vortex, Zen-ray, etc. at about two to three times the $599 price. I think if you get a good one and it survives shipment from Botach it will hold its own very well in that company, at least at distances beyond 100'.
 
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The Brunton ICON 25-50x 80mm scope I ordered from Botach.com arrived yesterday. The foam lined Brunton scope box had simply been wrapped in a plastic shipping bag and there was no Botach paperwork included. Fortunately, I haven’t detected any signs of damage.

Weather is poor here, so it will be Monday before I can really start my normal outdoor tests. Here are a few initial impressions for those who are thinking of moving quickly while these are still available for $599.

Normally indoor tests at 30 feet would be good enough to reach conclusions about resolution and aberrations, but this scope has an odd behavior at close range. Many scopes show somewhat higher spherical aberration at close distance because the spherical correction is designed to be optimum at infinity focus, but I’ve never seen SA increase as dramatically at close focus as it does in this scope. It’s unacceptable (about ½ wave) at 30’ and gets worse at the closest focusing distance of 15’. I haven’t yet conducted a proper star-test at long distance, but I can see from comparing it to other scopes looking casually at distant objects from my deck that the image improves considerably at distances above 100’. This behavior might be explained by a unique objective design. There is a fixed triplet up front, but it is combined with a positive focusing doublet. Every other scope I’ve seen with a focusing lens has used a negative doublet.

On the plus side, longitudinal chromatic aberration at any distance is extremely well corrected, well enough for me to suspect that the “SD” glass is probably one of the Fluorite equivalents, like Ohara FPL-53. But, on the other hand the 25-50x eyepiece is afflicted with a large dose of lateral CA, fortunately not impinging on the center of the field, but quite vivid on high contrast edges by about 1/3 of the way to the edge.

I can say at this point that the eyepiece does have a nice wide apparent field, about 55º at 25x and close to 80º at 50x. Off axis sharpness is adequate, but not impressive. The eye relief is quite consistent over the zoom range, about 20mm from the glass, 16mm from the eyecup rim.

I’ll post in more detail later (which might include some revisions to these initial impressions), but for those who are thinking of buying one from Botach I would say that this is certainly no $4000 scope, with the possible exception of longitudinal CA, which is very well corrected. While I've seen specimens of alpha scopes that were worse than this one at long distances, I think its real optical competition would be Vortex, Zen-ray, etc. at about two to three times the $599 price. I think if you get a good one and it survives shipment from Botach it will hold its own very well in that company, at least at distances beyond 100'.
Henry ... I wonder if because I ordered my 4 Icons a few weeks before you, is why they all arrived in a nicely packaged shipping box's with Botach's shipping invoice . They all came in Brunton"s foam line box's with all paperwork(manuals,warranty/registration cards. Do you think the zoom eyepieces Brunton supplies is the scopes Achilles Heel ? I know when the Pentax XW20 eyepiece is used on the Epoch it takes the scope to another level when compared to the 20-60 zoom it originally came with. I found the scope body to be quite nice .. nice coating's on the glass/clean. The rubber armor fit seemed tight & very robust, providing adequate protection. The focusing ring very smooth. Overall I found the scope body to be of higher quality than the bodies of the Vortex or Zen-Ray scopes I have handled. ... gwen
 
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The Brunton ICON 25-50x 80mm scope I ordered from Botach.com arrived yesterday. The foam lined Brunton scope box had simply been wrapped in a plastic shipping bag and there was no Botach paperwork included. Fortunately, I haven’t detected any signs of damage.

Weather is poor here, so it will be Monday before I can really start my normal outdoor tests. Here are a few initial impressions for those who are thinking of moving quickly while these are still available for $599.

Normally indoor tests at 30 feet would be good enough to reach conclusions about resolution and aberrations, but this scope has an odd behavior at close range. Many scopes show somewhat higher spherical aberration at close distance because the spherical correction is designed to be optimum at infinity focus, but I’ve never seen SA increase as dramatically at close focus as it does in this scope. It’s unacceptable (about ½ wave) at 30’ and gets worse at the closest focusing distance of 15’. I haven’t yet conducted a proper star-test at long distance, but I can see from comparing it to other scopes looking casually at distant objects from my deck that the image improves considerably at distances above 100’. This behavior might be explained by a unique objective design. There is a fixed triplet up front, but it is combined with a positive focusing doublet. Every other scope I’ve seen with a focusing lens has used a negative doublet.

On the plus side, longitudinal chromatic aberration at any distance is extremely well corrected, well enough for me to suspect that the “SD” glass is probably one of the Fluorite equivalents, like Ohara FPL-53. But, on the other hand the 25-50x eyepiece is afflicted with a large dose of lateral CA, fortunately not impinging on the center of the field, but quite vivid on high contrast edges by about 1/3 of the way to the edge.

I can say at this point that the eyepiece does have a nice wide apparent field, about 55º at 25x and close to 80º at 50x. Off axis sharpness is adequate, but not impressive. The eye relief is quite consistent over the zoom range, about 20mm from the glass, 16mm from the eyecup rim.

I’ll post in more detail later (which might include some revisions to these initial impressions), but for those who are thinking of buying one from Botach I would say that this is certainly no $4000 scope, with the possible exception of longitudinal CA, which is very well corrected. While I've seen specimens of alpha scopes that were worse than this one at long distances, I think its real optical competition would be Vortex, Zen-ray, etc. at about two to three times the $599 price. I think if you get a good one and it survives shipment from Botach it will hold its own very well in that company, at least at distances beyond 100'.
Henry .... You mention this scopes odd behavior at close range , along with the 25-50x eyepiece lateral CA on the center of field and what appears to have a unique objective design .... could this all be because Brunton's designers goal was to market this to "Shooters " (Hunters), people who would use this for long range Target Practice/Hunting ID ? Maybe some of our members here who are hunters who actually use their spotters for Prey ID & long range shooting matches could give their opinion on this. .... gwen
 
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Henry .... You mention this scopes odd behavior at close range , along with the 25-50x eyepiece lateral CA on the center of field and what appears to have a unique objective design .... could this all be because Brunton's designers goal was to market this to "Shooters " (Hunters), people who would use this for long range Target Practice/Hunting ID ? Maybe some of our members here who are hunters who actually use their spotters for Prey ID & long range shooting matches could give their opinion on this. .... gwen

Hunters and target shooters have no need for a scope at close ranges, so optical shortcomings there will be immaterial. Chromatic aberration is a different matter, anything that reduces the clarity of seeing can prejudice the decision. So the trades apparently made seem reasonable if these are hunting oriented scopes.
I have no idea if the Brunton's optical design is unique or if it is widely used.
However, Henry's test has identified another factor that needs to be respected in evaluating a scope, whether it performs more or less uniformly for different distances.
Afaik, this is not usually addressed in scope tests, so another potential for surprises lurks.
 
I’ve only done a few more tests of the Brunton scope, but I think I’m done unless someone has a question about something specific.

The best part first...I agree with Gwen that the scope comes across as very well made. The focus and zoom rings are buttery smooth with no slop. Fit and finish are just fine. I don’t have any complaints about it as a mechanical device.

Optically, I’m not as enthusiastic. Longitudinal CA is very well corrected and I don’t doubt that the image looks excellent when the scope is combined with a 20mm Pentax XW, but that combination yields only about 22-22.5x, which isn’t much of a test of the optical quality of an 80mm scope.

I’ve already mentioned the oddly large increase in spherical aberration at close distances. In my measurements the scope’s resolution is degraded by increasing SA from about 1.65 arc seconds at 200 feet (OK, but not outstanding for an 80mm birding scope) to about 3 arc seconds at the closest focus of about 13’ (the worst I’ve ever seen in an 80mm class birding scope). The photos below show the image of a 1951 USAF resolution target photographed at about 20’ through the Brunton scope on the left and an Astro-Physics Stowaway on the right. The AP scope is designed for best correction at infinity, so it also suffers some increase in spherical aberration at 20’, but it’s still very good at around 1/6 wave (it’s guaranteed better than 1/10 wave at infinity). The Brunton is truly terrible at 20’, I think worse than I wave. These photos are not accurate representations of resolving power, but they show what very high spherical aberration looks like. Contrast and sharpness are severely degraded as details appear to be imbedded in a gauzy haze of unfocused light.

I’ve never seen such behavior before and I can only offer the conjecture that the Brunton’s positive focusing lens system is somehow involved since the position of the focusing lens is the only thing that changes with distance. I doubt that this bad performance at close range was done intentionally to produce a better result at long range. Not every bad thing in a design is a trade-off for a good thing. In this case the spherical aberration and resolution do improve at longer distance, but not that impressively. This specimen is a decent enough scope beyond 100’, but at its best the corrections are not quite ¼ wave. That’s probably reasonable for a $1000-$1200 scope, but I certainly wouldn’t be happy if I had shelled out $2500+ for it.

On the plus side, the assembly of the optics on my unit is mostly free of the defects, like astigmatism, pinching and coma that can turn up even in alpha scopes. In a defocused star-test there is a mysteriously large dark gap in the extra-focal rings between the outermost ring and the inner rings, which might be turned edge. I’ve never seen that in a lens and I've only seen pictures of it in mirrors, so I’m not sure exactly what it looks like. If it is turned edge that would add some more unfocused light on top of the spherical aberration, but it could be completely corrected with a stop-down mask.

Lastly, I would say that the 25-50x zoom eyepiece does not appear to limit the center field performance of the scope in any way. The eyepiece’s sharpness is perfectly fine in the center, limited only by the quality of the scope it’s used on. It does have plenty of lateral color (even when used on another scope), but there is a color free central area of about 15º-20º. Beyond that area the color fringes (orange on inner facing edges, blue/green on outer facing) blossom very quickly at high contrast borders especially at 50x, but are less obvious as magnification is reduced. The best field flatness, on the other hand, is at 50x with field curvature increasing as magnification decreases. Off-axis astigmatism is pretty low. There is very slight barrel distortion at all magnifications. I measured the focal length of the zoom eyepiece at about 9-18mm. That is so close to the focal length of the Leica 25-50x zoom (8.9-17.8mm) that I wonder if the Brunton EP could be a copy of the Leica.

In the end I’ve probably decided to keep the scope because it meets the minimum requirements for our uses. It will be our go to scope when we don’t want to risk one of our small astronomical refractors in bad weather, blowing sand, salt spray, etc. However, for those who are hoping for a Rolls Royce scope at a Ford Fiesta price I don’t think the Brunton is quite that good, more like a Ford Focus scope for a Ford Fiesta price.
 

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.... a few more final comments about the Brunton scope.

First and most noteworthy is something that is mentioned in the owner’s manual, but I didn’t see in any of the marketing material. This scope has a genuine variable speed focuser, the only one I’ve ever heard of in a spotting scope. Its motions are so smooth and natural that it required some measurements for me to be sure that the speed really was changing over the focusing range. A constant speed focuser requires a large amount of focuser movement at close range compared to long distances. A variable speed focuser seeks to reduce the amount of focuser movement needed at close range without affecting the speed at long distances. I compared the Brunton to a scope with a constant speed rack and pinion focuser over two ranges, 14’-34’ and 34’-infinity. With the R&P the 14’-34’ focus change required about 70% of the total focuser rotation from 14’ to infinity. With the Brunton focuser it was about 35%. Moreover, the total focuser rotation from 14’ to infinity in the Brinton is reduced from what would have been about 1.5 turns with a constant speed focuser to about 0.8 turns with the variable speed, and at no sacrifice to the focusing ease at long distance. In fact, I think it’s the best focuser I’ve ever seen on a spotting scope. It would an improvement if this design were adopted by the alpha brands.

A second thing mentioned in the owner’s manual is aspheric lenses used somewhere in the scope. Unfortunately it isn’t made clear whether they are objective or eyepiece elements. I suspect the latter because they are claimed to improve edge sharpness and reduce the number of “corrective lenses” required. Perhaps this is the source of the unusually high lateral color in the eyepiece.

I can’t help but notice a few similarities between the Brunton ICON and the current Leica Televid. The focal lengths appear to be very close, possibly identical. Close focus for both is exactly the same, 12.5’. The Leica also uses aspherical elements in its eyepiece and the eye relief of the two scopes appears to be nearly identical across the zoom range (I re-measured the Brunton as 19mm at 25x and 50x, shortening to 17mm at about 35x). Could be that the Leica design was a major “inspiration” for the Brunton designers.

Finally, I’ve now had the scope out a few times observing waterfowl at distances up to about 2 miles on our local reservoirs. I’m pretty pleased with the 50x center field performance at long range. I would not expect to see any smaller details in the Swarovski or Leica scopes with their 25-50x zooms. I think, as long as one is willing to accept the 50x limitation on magnification the Brunton is quite capable of showing all there is to see at 50x for people like me with about 20/15 eyesight acuity.
 
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Henry,

This is interesting stuff.

The progressive focus is a nice surprise, especially that it works well, with apparently no side-effects.

The similarities to Leica are even more so, since the Apo-Televid 82 has had the questionable honor among alpha scopes I've tested of being the undisputed SA king, with several samples showing enough to visibly compromise image sharpness and contrast already at 50x, although not necessarily enough to show substantially in pure unboosted 50x resolution measurements. So perhaps Brunton designers took a little too much inspiration from others this time.

Kimmo
 
Henry,
I'm happy to hear that you selected the only "Swedish" scope that could be found on the market,
Brunton was acquired by Fenix Outdoor (also owner of Fjällräven, Primus etc) a few years ago).

Unfortunately, from what I can find, Brunton seem to have stopped making/marketing binos and scopes,
so I guess you got one of the last, but at a very good price I presume.

No binos or scopes here anymore:

http://www.brunton.com

All Brunton-binos discontinued at bhphoto:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/searc...&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search=
 
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Henry,

This is interesting stuff.

The progressive focus is a nice surprise, especially that it works well, with apparently no side-effects.

So perhaps Brunton designers took a little too much inspiration from others this time.

Kimmo

I suspect that Kamakura is involved also, as the manufacturer for Brunton optics:

http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=279011#7

And this Kite Scope seems very similar to the Brunton:

http://www.ksp80.com/slide/specs_eng.html

according to pete gamby (opticron), it is based on the same chassis
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=233349#7
 
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I just received a 25x50x80 Icon spotter in the straight version.

I have started to compare it to my Zeiss 85 T FL 20x70x85. This scope I have compared to other premium scopes.

I have not done a low light test. In all other aspects the Brunton is holding its own.

Very little of any CA, sharp and flat to the edge of the FOV at all powers. Sweet spot is very large. Sharpness at 50x is very close if not equal to my Zeiss at 50x.

At lower powers (both scopes under 40x) the Brunton shows less CA, less pincushion distortion and is sharper near the edges (larger sweet spot).

Contrary to Henry's test I did not find a drop in resolution in the Brunton on close objects.

I am delighted with the scope. IMO this is the best optic buy I have ever seen. I would be happy with is performance if I had paid $1500 or more for the scope.

And yes, focus and mechanics are very nice.
 
Thanks for the comments, Kimmo,

I wonder if the Televid also uses a positive focuser? Unfortunately there's no Leica dealer anywhere close to me. If you happen to notice a Televid in a Helsinki shop could you check to see if the focusing lens moves forward toward infinity focus? A quick 50x look at a resolution target or an artificial star at 4m should reveal whether the SA is as terrible as the ICON at 4m.

Today I tried just looking into the front of the scope while rotating the focusing collar at a steady rate. The increasing speed of the focusing lens as it approached close focus was readily apparent.

Vespobuteo,

Thanks for the information. I didn't realized I had bought a scope from an American brand owned by a Swedish company, possibly copied by the Japanese from a German design. Globalization at its finest!

jnielsen,

I'm interested to read that your scope works well at close focus. Could it that be we are just interpreting what we see differently? I'll try to post some star-test photos for you to compare to your scope in the next few days.

Henry
 
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...First and most noteworthy is something that is mentioned in the owner’s manual, but I didn’t see in any of the marketing material. This scope has a genuine variable speed focuser, the only one I’ve ever heard of in a spotting scope. Its motions are so smooth and natural that it required some measurements for me to be sure that the speed really was changing over the focusing range. ... In fact, I think it’s the best focuser I’ve ever seen on a spotting scope. It would an improvement if this design were adopted by the alpha brands...

Amen to that. I've long puzzled over the lack of variable speed focus in scopes and binoculars. Now that Brunton is out of the business, as far as I know only Minox and Pentax have variable speed designs in sports optics (in some of their bins). Unfortunately, whenever I bring up the subject, most folks shrug and don't seem to grasp its advantages, or else give excuses about complexity, precision, and weight as to why we don't see it routinely employed. I think the former problem (consumer awareness) is the bigger hurdle--consumer demand is low, so the designs are not being developed. Brunton gave up marketing the feature, Pentax doesn't mention it at all, and Minox buries discussion of it within their marketing of the distance-calibrated focusing knobs (a far less important feature) of their bins that have variable speed focus. Now that image stabilization is becoming routine in cameras, I suspect the potential market for IS in scopes and bins is growing by leaps and bounds, though we aren't seeing many such designs yet. I wish something of the same consumer education and build-up of pent-up demand were happening with variable speed focus. Automated motor-driven lenses has made variable speed gearing mechanisms unimportant for action photography lenses because the camera has no difficulty changing focus motor speed to maintain focus on a subject moving at constant speed toward or away from the photographer. That's hard to do manually, as we must with scopes and bins, but it would be much easier with variable ratio focus.

--AP
 
Amen to that. I've long puzzled over the lack of variable speed focus in scopes and binoculars. Now that Brunton is out of the business, as far as I know only Minox and Pentax have variable speed designs in sports optics (in some of their bins).
--AP

Kamakura is still in the business,

see this thread:
"The variable speed focus on this model is also an option from KK (Kamakura Koki) for some full size binos."
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=279011#7

And some kind of variable speed focuser patent
from Kamakura here:

https://www.google.se/patents/US737...X&ei=hfS0VK7KCeP8ygPj_oHQCw&ved=0CFEQ6AEwBzgK
 
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Kamakura is still in the business,

see this thread:
"The variable speed focus on this model is also an option from KK (Kamakura Koki) for some full size binos."
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=279011#7

And some kind of variable speed focuser patent
from Kamakura here:

https://www.google.se/patents/US737...X&ei=hfS0VK7KCeP8ygPj_oHQCw&ved=0CFEQ6AEwBzgK

Sure, Kamakura can make such bins, but it seems none of their client businesses/brands are asking for them. Does that Opticron compact have variable speed focus? That's a new one on me. Interesting that they say nothing about it in their product literature.

--AP
 
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I decided last week to order one of Botach’s few remaining Brunton ICON 20-60x straight scopes, just to acquire a 20-60x eyepiece to use on my angled version. I thought I could then combine the 25-50x with the straight body and sell them on the used market, hopefully for around the $600 I paid.

The scope arrived yesterday and after some initial testing I’m left a bit unsure about what to do. The eyepieces have different sets of virtues and vices. Alas, one is not obviously preferable to the other.

For my purposes the 20-60x has the clear advantage of higher magnification, although I’m finding that for my eyesight acuity combined with the scope’s resolution limit the difference in observable detail probably does not quite equal the 20% magnification increase. The 20-60x also has visibly lower off-axis aberrations (particularly lateral color) within the AFOV it shares with the wide angle zoom. However, the AFOV of the 20-60 is not very generous compared to most modern zooms (about 40º@20x, 62º@60x) and its eye relief is substantially shorter than the 25-50x (15mm@20x and 60x, 14mm@35x, measured from the glass). Basically, I have to choose my poison.

Unfortunately for reselling purposes, the image quality of this particular straight body is visibly inferior to the angled body. A star-test reveals a few problems, none of which seems very serious taken alone. There is a little astigmatism and coma and the roof prism edge of the Schmidt-Pechan prism in this straight body is not as well made as the roof edge of the Schmidt prism in my angled specimen. It’s surprising to me that these three small defects seem to add together to make a pretty obvious difference in image sharpness.

I was particularly curious to see the spherical aberration behavior for a second specimen of this scope. In a star-test the SA appears to be nearly identical in both units, including the odd pattern of reasonably good correction at long distances degrading to very poor correction at close range.
 
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I decided last week to order one of Botach’s few remaining Brunton ICON 20-60x straight scopes, just to acquire a 20-60x eyepiece to use on my angled version. I thought I could then combine the 25-50x with the straight body and sell them on the used market, hopefully for around the $600 I paid.

The scope arrived yesterday and after some initial testing I’m left a bit unsure about what to do. The eyepieces have different sets of virtues and vices. Alas, one is not obviously preferable to the other.

For my purposes the 20-60x has the clear advantage of higher magnification, although I’m finding that for my eyesight acuity combined with the scope’s resolution limit the difference in observable detail probably does not quite equal the 20% magnification increase. The 20-60x also has visibly lower off-axis aberrations (particularly lateral color) within the AFOV it shares with the wide angle zoom. However, the AFOV of the 20-60 is not very generous compared to most modern zooms (about 40º@20x, 62º@60x) and its eye relief is substantially shorter than the 25-50x (15mm@20x and 60x, 14mm@35x, measured from the glass). Basically, I have to choose my poison.

Unfortunately for reselling purposes, the image quality of this particular straight body is visibly inferior to the angled body. A star-test reveals a few problems, none of which seems very serious taken alone. There is a little astigmatism and coma and the roof prism edge of the Schmidt-Pechan prism in this straight body is not as well made as the roof edge of the Schmidt prism in my angled specimen. It’s surprising to me that these three small defects seem to add together to make a pretty obvious difference in image sharpness.

I was particularly curious to see the spherical aberration behavior for a second specimen of this scope. In a star-test the SA appears to be nearly identical in both units, including the odd pattern of reasonably good correction at long distances degrading to very poor correction at close range.
Henry .... You might want to think about selling both zoom eyepieces, then finding a higher fixed eyepiece you could permanently attach to which either style body scope you prefer. Since you would like to use this scope at a higher magnification, sell the other scope body you do not want to keep. When I get back from my trip in a few weeks I plan on finding various different fixed eyepieces to try on the remaining Brunton scopes I have, eventually only keeping one. The first scope zoom (20-60x) I sold for $200. .. gwen
 
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gwen,

Thanks for the suggestion, but I much prefer zoom eyepieces for birding purposes. Either of the Brunton zooms will do, but neither is ideal. If I were to glue something to my angled ICON body it would probably be a Baader Hyperion zoom or one of the Swarovski 20-60x clones. The Baader would be about 21.5-55x on the ICON with a wider field than the 20-60x ICON zoom. The Swarovski clones would be about 22-57x.

BTW, I'm surprised to hear that there is a used market for ICON eyepieces and scope bodies alone, since they don't seem to be compatible with any other brand's bayonet mount.

Henry
 
gwen,

Thanks for the suggestion, but I much prefer zoom eyepieces for birding purposes. Either of the Brunton zooms will do, but neither is ideal. If I were to glue something to my angled ICON body it would probably be a Baader Hyperion zoom or one of the Swarovski 20-60x clones. The Baader would be about 21.5-55x on the ICON with a wider field than the 20-60x ICON zoom. The Swarovski clones would be about 22-57x.

BTW, I'm surprised to hear that there is a used market for ICON eyepieces and scope bodies alone, since they don't seem to be compatible with any other brand's bayonet mount.

Henry
I sold the zoom on Ebay, the buyer probably already had the brunton scope with the 25-50 zoom and wanted a 20-60 power zoom. I do not know how many potential buyers are out there but I will find out when I start to sell off the other brunton scopes bodies and zoom eyepieces. Before Brunton discontinued the Brunton line Opticsplanet sold the zoom eyepieces separately ... 20-60 zoom for $639 & the 25-50 for $1069. I can see where these scopes with the right eyepieces would be ideal for shooters who would use them for target sighting bullet holes. .... gwen
 
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Review of Brunton ICON 25-50x 80mm Angled Scope

I have tried to order two, Botach has asked me for copies of ID's and such.
Never had that happen before.
I will try again on Tuesday, out of town until then.
No idea what is going on.
Cameralandny has ZenRay scope on sale for $799.99 but they aren't asking for all kinds of ID.
Art
 
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