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perdu

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Hi Everyone,

I am from Houston Texas and have started birding over the last 2 years. I have always used binoculars but I ordered a Nikon Fieldscope ED82 and a Pentax FP 80ED with the idea of sending one back. The problem with the Nikon is finding eyepieces for it but it's nice and light weight. The Pentax is a heavy beast but eyepieces are no problem. Does anyone have experience with these two scopes and have any words of wisdom on which to keep.

I'll post this in the Nikon forum too. Thanks for any observations and advice.
 
I haven't used the 80 mm Pentax but have owned the PF-65EDAII and now own the Nikon ED82A. When I bought the Nikon ED50A, I found that it was nearly equivalent to the Pentax 65 mm.

The Pentax 80 mm is a huge scope compared to the much more manageable Nikon. And I read the focusing mechanism of the Pentax makes the usable aperture considerably smaller when not focused to infinity. I think the actual aperture, probably calculated using the exit pupil size, goes down to about 70 mm, but I can be wrong. I admit it has a very nice view with the XW eyepieces, though.

//L
 
Have you considered re-sale down the road ? I know we all say this is the one but more times than not we put them up for sale for one reason or another. From my experience & I have re-sold so many times in the last 40 years unless you are trying to get rid of a piece of junk( clearly neither the Pentax or the Nikon fall in this category), their is a good chance you will get back more percentage wise re-selling the Pentax when their is a big price difference paying retail because their may be less people with the funds or the ability to come up with the money to buy in this case the Nikon. If both scopes basically will do what you want you might want to consider this when making a purchase. .... gwen
 
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