I have not much experience with scopes. We have had Focus Nature scope for 1,5 years. It was 220 € with decent Velbon tripod, worth of 60 €. We have identified lot of nice birds with it. At 23x magnication it has good pic quality, but when you zoom, the pic gets blurrier and blurrier. So zoom gets use only in desperation. FN seems to be well made, focus knob is OK and it weights a lot. So in practice we use only "fixed" 23x magnification like 95 % of the time.
So I read through this forum searching for new scope. It was a toss up between very small scope, or big scope - and maybe I shoud buy something in between... I wouldn't like to spend too much on the scope, but I knew, that cheaper scope propably ends in disappointmet. :-C
Today the Hawke (450 €) was delivered and I took some look through the window, as it's cold and snovy outside. The scope is nice looking, quite big and the 2-way focus knobs feel nice. My first impression of pic quality vs. the FN is that it's not much better. :-C At 20x the view is good, but it gets blurrier with more zoom. I have only snovy landscape to look at, so test environment is not best possible.
I don't know, maybe I am expecting too much, but for now I am in the opinion to return the Hawke, as it's seem not to be much of improvement over FN and it's ever larger in size. In many way the 2 scopes are similar. Now I have to rethink, that maybe I should go for the small scope route...:smoke: or just be happy with decent 23x view the I have.
PS: I have this blackening phenomenon with both scopes... when I increase the zoom and look through the scope from bit further away than optimum ER there appears a blacked area in the 11 o'clock that gets bigger the more you zoom in, covering like 15 % of the circle. :eek!: I thought there was something wrong with FN scope, but the very same thing happened with Hawke.
So I read through this forum searching for new scope. It was a toss up between very small scope, or big scope - and maybe I shoud buy something in between... I wouldn't like to spend too much on the scope, but I knew, that cheaper scope propably ends in disappointmet. :-C
Today the Hawke (450 €) was delivered and I took some look through the window, as it's cold and snovy outside. The scope is nice looking, quite big and the 2-way focus knobs feel nice. My first impression of pic quality vs. the FN is that it's not much better. :-C At 20x the view is good, but it gets blurrier with more zoom. I have only snovy landscape to look at, so test environment is not best possible.
I don't know, maybe I am expecting too much, but for now I am in the opinion to return the Hawke, as it's seem not to be much of improvement over FN and it's ever larger in size. In many way the 2 scopes are similar. Now I have to rethink, that maybe I should go for the small scope route...:smoke: or just be happy with decent 23x view the I have.
PS: I have this blackening phenomenon with both scopes... when I increase the zoom and look through the scope from bit further away than optimum ER there appears a blacked area in the 11 o'clock that gets bigger the more you zoom in, covering like 15 % of the circle. :eek!: I thought there was something wrong with FN scope, but the very same thing happened with Hawke.
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