Choosing top-of-the-range scope (1 Viewer)

scampo said:

A fine, balanced analysis and explanation, Jay - what complicates matters further is the idiosyncratic ways in which we choose items that are very expensive - and what influences come to bear on the decision making process.
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I suggested this was plain daft as I have looked through these scopes alongside my Nikon ED82 and the differences just are not objectively sufficient to choose one above the others. Needless to say I was rebuffed. A kind of madness borne of our affluence, I suppose.

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Thanks. I'm inclined to agree with you but I'd hold out a little bit on the possibility that there are very real differences in the way we see and possibly moreso in the way our brains interpret what we see. I remember recently someone mentioning how much clearer a particular digiscoping result was compared to another. But a simple change in color balance suddenly made them appear sharper. The significant color cast lead the person to perceive a lack of sharpness.

OTOH, I know from personal experience how we adapt ourselves to our perceptions. I've read true blind tests where high end audio equipment cannot be differentiated from mid-level mass market items except by a very few and then usually only by listening to very unmusical test tones.

It would be interesting to try to try to design such a "blind" scope test.

A blind test (what a lovely metaphor, here!)?

It seems odd, on the surface, that no magazine does such a thing as it cannot be beyond their ability. But, on reflection, I don't think they have any need as they operate to suit their market - and a rather affluent, idiosyncratic and untechnical market it probably is, in the main (interestingly, not reflected within BF).

An objective and technical review would appeal only to the minority, these days, I suspect and - from a marketing view - would be a waste of time and money.

I have seen photo magazines go the same way over the years, and the reasons are surely the same. As a youngster and a keen photographer, I was fascinated by objective tests; yet, my own two sons, both far better educated and more knowledgable in many ways than I was at their ages, have no interest in such things; and their friends are the same.

Such information seems to have become a thing of the past for the majority - a quirkiness that hangs only in a few. And now to a paradox: an almost perverse fascination seems to exist with arcane technical details at the point of sale: car and electronic manufacturers love to use techno-speak, especially acronyms and abbreviations, for example, RAM, rpm, Mb, Mp, LCD, vario, and so on. Such terms impress would-be customers, it seems, and help them decide on which products to purchases. Yet few either know or care what the terms trul;y mean.

Odd indeed.