Mid-range high quality for money spotting scope (1 Viewer)

Alexis Powell said:

Nice! The 82ED is a great scope (as is the older 78ED, mentioned by Nick) and the 30x MC or DS eyepiece gives a beautiful wide and sharp view. My favorite other eyepiece on that scope is the 50x MC or DS. It works nicely (when the air is still) for scanning and viewing distant shorebirds and waterfowl. When using the 30x, and I need to steal a quick look at high power (very rare ocassions), I take off my eyeglasses and use the 25-75x MCII. Few scopes offer the choice of such high magnification.

--AP

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Thanks! The 50x or 25-75x MCII would indeed be the next eyepiece if I buy another one. Do you see a lot of difference between the 50x fixed and the 25-75x on 50x?

Hi,

congratulations to what I think is the best scope on your list - I hope you'll enjoy many great views.

Regarding 20-75 zoom vs 50 wide, I would expect the 50 to show nearly double the field of the zoom at 50x - they tend to open up in afov only near the short focal length end. Sharpness will probably be comparable and the fixed EP will have group or do less which might result in a percent more transmission or so - but that's nothing you can see.

Joachim

Congratulations on the new scope DS. That combination is one of my favorites too.

DutchSparrow said:

Thanks! The 50x or 25-75x MCII would indeed be the next eyepiece if I buy another one. Do you see a lot of difference between the 50x fixed and the 25-75x on 50x?

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I have all the lenses and here's my suggestion, based on 12 years of use.
Stick with the 30X for a long period of time...perhaps 6 months of use. You may find the 30X view addictive.

I found the 50X to be limited and a pain to switch in/out, especially in the field. The 50X DS has other limitations including less eyerelief and a smaller exit pupil. The smaller exit pupil considerably darkens the image in low light, something I don't care for. Finally, it's a lot harder to find your target with the 50X. I haven't had the 50X on my ED82 in many years.

The 75X DS expands on the problems found with the 50X DS. The exit pupil is smaller still, eye relief gets shorter and finding a target is really challenging. I bought mine for night skies (trapezium in Orion looks pretty darn good) and it works as expected for this application. At night I can view without eyeglasses.

All the DS lenses are super sharp, colorful, etc. They are great lenses, given the proper application. Changing out a screw-in lens in the field is not quick or simple. Miss an alignment and you'll end up with crossed threads. You won't be changing lenses in the rain. And, most of the time it's simply not going to produce a better view. I know because I've tested these lenses multiple times. Not surprisingly, the 30X DS produces a smaller image that is, in most cases, more pure than images at 50/75X. Heat shimmer alone can kill any and all benefits of higher magnifications.

The 25-75X zoom is, In my opinion, the next option, not the 50/75X DS lenses. The zoom allows you to FIND a target and then zoom in/out as conditions warrant. My two are deadly sharp all the way to 75X BUT, once again, high mags are only useful to me when I want to tease out the tiniest of detail AND conditions are near perfect. Eye relief and FOV are poor on the zoom as is the zoom adjustment. Before you spend any money on a zoom I suggest you get comfortable with the 30X and consider all the limitations of the various eyepieces. After two years of using the 25-75 zoom I put the 30X DS back on and plan to leave it on. I now use a Kowa 883 with a 25-60 zoom, a scope that is a lot more useful in the field than the Nikon/25-75 zoom combination. The ED82/30X combo is for friends and anyone pasing by who just wants to "see" what we're looking at!

See http://nikon.com/products/sportoptics/lineup/scopes/ds/spec.htm for specs on eyepieces.

You could also buy a 'doubler' and just put it over the 30X eyepiece when you need more power. With a doubler you don't need to open the scope (unscrew the 30X eyepiece); you just hold the doubler against the eyepiece and there you have 2 or 2.5 times the power.

Image quality won't be very good, but this could be a good solution when you need more raw resolution to make the ID.

Enjoy the ED82!


George

Thanks a lot Joachim, Frank and Pileatus!

Great choice DS.

DutchSparrow said:

Thanks! The 50x or 25-75x MCII would indeed be the next eyepiece if I buy another one. Do you see a lot of difference between the 50x fixed and the 25-75x on 50x?

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I agree with most everything Pileatus wrote. The only significant differences are in FOV and DOF, not sharpness or brightness. The FOV of the 50x is _much_ greater than the zoom at the same power (also, the eye-relief is much better at ~18 mm). In fact, the 50x FOV is wide enough to make it competitive with the zoom at 25x for getting the target in the FOV (so it works well if you are good at pointing your scope without looking through it), though getting the target in view will still be easier at 25x because of the greater DOF. I usually use the zoom if I need higher power. I only use the 50x when I'm at a marsh/lake/mudflat, the seeing is good, there are lots of birds, but they are all really far away.

--AP

With any of the Nikon Fieldscopes the ideal combination is one wideangle lens + the zoom. The wideangle whenever you need the wide field of view (raptor migration, passerines), the zoom when changing magnification quickly and easily is more useful than a wide field of view (shorebirds, geese, ducks).

BTW, what's missing in the Nikon eyepiece lineup is a a wideangle with a magnifcation lower than 30x on the ED82. With wideangles I personally prefer something like 25x, simply because of the greater depth of field.

Hermann

14Goudvink said:

You could also buy a 'doubler' and just put it over the 30X eyepiece when you need more power. With a doubler you don't need to open the scope (unscrew the 30X eyepiece); you just hold the doubler against the eyepiece and there you have 2 or 2.5 times the power.

Image quality won't be very good, but this could be a good solution when you need more raw resolution to make the ID.

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I do that quite a lot, using the Zeiss3x12 Mono. That gives me 90x. The quality isn't there, but it's good enough to get some details on the birds I can't see at 30x. Saved my butt with "difficult" birds at large distances more than once.

Hermann

Hermann said:

...BTW, what's missing in the Nikon eyepiece lineup is a a wideangle with a magnifcation lower than 30x on the ED82. With wideangles I personally prefer something like 25x, simply because of the greater depth of field...

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Hermann,

have you ever given the 25x MC a try? It is a "conventional" eyepiece, which is to say not officially wide field, long eye-relief, or optically complicated. Nevertheless, it is an excellent eyepiece. The FOV is identical to the 30x WF/MC/DS models, so it is plenty wide. The eye relief is the same as the 30x WF/MC models, so adequate for most glasses wearers (~15+ mm). And despite its simple design, it has excellent sharpness across the field, comparable to the MC models. I don't know how easy it is to find or what it goes for these days, but it used to be quite inexpensive.

--AP

Thanks all for commenting. I wil buy a 25-75x eyepiece later on for birds that are really far away or for fast zooms for when needing more details on a bird found on low mag. But first I will try this one and see where its limitations are and not less important, save some money again, because I also replaced my Bynolyt Tern bins from 8 years ago with Zeiss Terra 8x42 bins So I spend enough for now, sadly

I also have to find a protector cup for the top of the eyepiece to protect the glass. I didn't get one when I bought the scope. There's also no screw on cover for the glass end part of the scope for protection, but at least I can slide out the suncap there for protection.

Alexis Powell said:

Hermann,

have you ever given the 25x MC a try? It is a "conventional" eyepiece, which is to say not officially wide field, long eye-relief, or optically complicated. Nevertheless, it is an excellent eyepiece.

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Yep, I've got that somewhere, still the older version, without multi-coating. AFOV is something like 60 degress, so not too bad. Optically I think it's not quite up to the standard of the wideangles.

I actually use the EDIII more often than either the ED82 or the ED50, so I often just use the 30x WA on the EDIII, that's then 24x - ideal for my kind of birding.

BTW, the tiny 40x (on the EDIII) with its narrow field of view and its very short eyerelief is also quite interesting. Its optics are very, very good, I think it's a very traditional orthoscopic eyepiece.

Hermann