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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hermann" data-source="post: 3193540" data-attributes="member: 4925">Not sure I agree with you here. Sure, zooms used to be pretty awful, but that was years ago. Starting with the Leica 20-60x for the original Apo-Televid 77mm zooms became increasingly competitive over the past two decades or so, and modern zooms are astonishingly good. For instance, I can't really see any difference in quality between the (excellent) Nikon wideangles and the Nikon MCII zoom on the fieldscope EDIIIA and the ED82A. Alright, the Nikon zoom is pretty narrow, but the quality of the image in terms of resolution and contrast is as good as that of the wideangles, at any magnification. I also think high magnifications can be very useful in terrestrial use as as well. Not on all days and certainly not in all environments, but at least over here there are certain times when magnifications well over 50-60x can yield quite a lot more detail than lower magnifications. For instance, at the coast, in summer, there's often a kind of "window of opportunity" in the late afternoon when the seeing is good enough to use very high magnifications,  provided the scope (and the eyepiece) are good enough. In fact, there have been days when I would have liked a big scope (bigger than my ED82) to be able to use magnifications of more than the 75x I can get with my ED82. On such days the only real limit orther than the optical quality of the scope is the size of its exit pupil, it should be at least 1mm, better 1.5mm.Hermann</blockquote>

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