very surprised (1 Viewer)

While out birding today I was asked by a fellow birder to help him out with the identification of a bird.
I couldnt find it through my pentax pf60 scope, so looked through his nikon ed82 scope as he already had it locked in on the bird.
I was very surprised that although roughly the same magnification eyepieces were being used on both scopes[he had the 30x, I had the 14mm which I believe is around 28x], the quality of the image through the 82mm nikon was noticably poorer than through my 60mm pentax????
The nikon was to be one of the scopes I was thinking of for a possible upgrade at a later date, but now I dont know.
I think I will now arrange to trial both the nikon ed82 and pentax pf80 together at rother valley optics, and decide from that.
theres quite a price difference between the two

http://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/nikon-fieldscope-ed82-angled-spotting-scope-body_d3389.html

http://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/pentax-pf-80ed-a-spotting-scope-body-only_d3361.html

The Nikon 82ED was certainly defective. A good specimen of that scope has optics as good as birding scopes get. Unfortunately, it's never safe to assume a birding scope is defect free. All of them are subject to wide sample variations. In my experience testing scopes I haven't found Nikon scopes to have any special problems with defects compared to others.

His scope or eyepiece being defective was my first thought, which is why I will be going to rother valley to do some comparing.
As well as the scopes I mentioned in the original post, I will also be trying out the kowa tsn 883, so am very interested in the results when comparing these spotting scopes, to see just what the vastly different prices on the three brings you.