henry link
Well-known member
I recently spent a pleasant few hours evaluating a scope that exceeded my expectations in nearly every way. The Nikon Monarch 82ED has been around for over 2 years now, but it doesn’t seem to have made much of an impression in the market or been much reviewed or discussed in optics forums.
A friend recently bought one and lent it to me to test. I had a hunch that it might employ the optics of the old 82ED Fieldscope in a new body combined with new bayonet mount eyepieces. One excellent feature that has definitely been retained from the old angled Fieldscopes is the oversized Schmidt prism that allows the light cone from the objective lens to pass through the erecting system without being split by a roof edge as is the case with every other angled scope that uses a Schmidt prism. The rest of the optical design appears to be at least somewhat new. The focal length is a little shorter than the old 82mm Fieldscope (about 505mm vs 525mm) and judging from the pattern of reflections returning from the eyepiece lenses the new 20x60 zoom is not the same design as the old 25-75x. Eye relief in the new zoom is longer, while the AFOV over the zoom range has remained nearly identical to the old one. The focuser on the new Monarch has a variable speed, faster at close range and slower at longer distances. It works so well that you don’t notice it’s there.
It was evident in the first thirty seconds of observing fine details at 60x that this was an unusually good telescope. Image quality is superb, with natural colors, very high contrast and sharpness that holds up so well at 60x that it almost seems as if there is no loss at all compared to 20x. When I did a star-test I was amazed to find this particular sample had probably the best corrections of axial aberrations I’ve seen in any spotting scope. The only other single scope that I remember being in the same class was a Kowa TSN-823 about ten years ago. I’ve seen no specimens of more recent Kowa, Zeiss, Swarovski or any other birding scope that equals this one when it comes to freedom from spherical aberration and this specimen showed no sign of any of the other common defects like coma, pinching or astigmatism. In my experience only the Kowa TSN-883 has equally good correction of longitudinal chromatic aberration.
I placed an artificial star at 10m indoors and at about 30m outdoors, in both cases using an Astro-Physics Stowaway as a reference scope. The out of focus diffraction patterns were essentially identical on both sides of focus in both scopes at 30m indicating sensibly perfect correction of spherical aberration, not a surprise for the Stowaway, but very rare to see in a spotting scope. I was also surprised to see that the Nikon did nearly at well at 10m, so unlike most spotters the close focus image is very high quality. There was no detectable longitudinal chromatic aberration around the focused star at 60x and also no significant color fringing at the edges of unfocused objects like tree branches in front or behind best focus. I think CA correction this good can only be explained by the use of an ED glass type with a very high Abbe value close to Fluorite, perhaps Nikon/Hikari’s J-FKH2 (vd 91.36).
At 10m the Nikon’s resolution measured 1.43” using a USAF 1951 glass slide. That works out to 117/D, better than any other spotter I've measured. I’m confident the resolution would improve to a perfect 115/D at longer distance, but it was already so close that I didn’t bother with outdoor measurements.
These are amazing results for a $1600 scope and easily place this particular Monarch ED unit at the head of the “alpha” class optically in almost every way except aperture size. It’s certainly by far the best scope I’ve seen in its aperture class, regardless of price. I can’t say what percentage of other Monarch units are this good, but finding just one specimen means that the optical design is not a limiting factor, as it appears to be for all the other medium priced scopes as well as most of the very expensive ones I’ve seen.
Now for a caveat. While the 20-60x zoom is excellent in most respects it's only average when it comes to lateral color. I mounted it on my Stowaway and compared it to five other zooms I have around. The Nikon zoom is completely clear of CA across about the center 6-7 degrees of AFOV, but outside that area the lateral color gradually reaches what I would call a moderate level at about 6 degrees off axis and is what I would call moderately high at the field edge. That’s similar to my old Nikon 25-75x MC zoom, so not terrible like my Pentax XF and Brunton ICON (Kamakura) zooms, but not as good as the Baader Hyperion, which has very little lateral color except near the field edge. I was able to determine that virtually all the lateral color in the Nikon scope image comes from the eyepiece by mounting the Baader Hyperion on the Nikon scope body. The Baader performed just as well matched with the Nikon objective lens as it does with the Stowaway. If I could find a way I would certainly use the Hyperion instead of the “kit zoom” (yes, the Hyperion does reach infinity focus).
Unfortunately, unlike in the UK and probably most other places in the world the Nikon marketing geniuses in the US do not sell the Monarch body alone, much less provide a 1.25” adapter which could easily be accommodated by the large bayonet mount. The scope has to be purchased here with the 20-60x zoom or a fixed 30x with a reticle. The optional wide angle 30-60x zoom and a fixed 38x eyepiece have be bought as expensive extra items. On paper the 30-60x looks interesting, but its lateral color might be worse or there might be some other problem that makes it less desirable than the standard zoom, which actually performs pretty well overall, very much like the old MC with longer eye relief.
I can’t think of much else to say about this scope. For once a scope does exactly what it’s supposed to do. Scopes with problems require more writing.
Henry Link
A friend recently bought one and lent it to me to test. I had a hunch that it might employ the optics of the old 82ED Fieldscope in a new body combined with new bayonet mount eyepieces. One excellent feature that has definitely been retained from the old angled Fieldscopes is the oversized Schmidt prism that allows the light cone from the objective lens to pass through the erecting system without being split by a roof edge as is the case with every other angled scope that uses a Schmidt prism. The rest of the optical design appears to be at least somewhat new. The focal length is a little shorter than the old 82mm Fieldscope (about 505mm vs 525mm) and judging from the pattern of reflections returning from the eyepiece lenses the new 20x60 zoom is not the same design as the old 25-75x. Eye relief in the new zoom is longer, while the AFOV over the zoom range has remained nearly identical to the old one. The focuser on the new Monarch has a variable speed, faster at close range and slower at longer distances. It works so well that you don’t notice it’s there.
It was evident in the first thirty seconds of observing fine details at 60x that this was an unusually good telescope. Image quality is superb, with natural colors, very high contrast and sharpness that holds up so well at 60x that it almost seems as if there is no loss at all compared to 20x. When I did a star-test I was amazed to find this particular sample had probably the best corrections of axial aberrations I’ve seen in any spotting scope. The only other single scope that I remember being in the same class was a Kowa TSN-823 about ten years ago. I’ve seen no specimens of more recent Kowa, Zeiss, Swarovski or any other birding scope that equals this one when it comes to freedom from spherical aberration and this specimen showed no sign of any of the other common defects like coma, pinching or astigmatism. In my experience only the Kowa TSN-883 has equally good correction of longitudinal chromatic aberration.
I placed an artificial star at 10m indoors and at about 30m outdoors, in both cases using an Astro-Physics Stowaway as a reference scope. The out of focus diffraction patterns were essentially identical on both sides of focus in both scopes at 30m indicating sensibly perfect correction of spherical aberration, not a surprise for the Stowaway, but very rare to see in a spotting scope. I was also surprised to see that the Nikon did nearly at well at 10m, so unlike most spotters the close focus image is very high quality. There was no detectable longitudinal chromatic aberration around the focused star at 60x and also no significant color fringing at the edges of unfocused objects like tree branches in front or behind best focus. I think CA correction this good can only be explained by the use of an ED glass type with a very high Abbe value close to Fluorite, perhaps Nikon/Hikari’s J-FKH2 (vd 91.36).
At 10m the Nikon’s resolution measured 1.43” using a USAF 1951 glass slide. That works out to 117/D, better than any other spotter I've measured. I’m confident the resolution would improve to a perfect 115/D at longer distance, but it was already so close that I didn’t bother with outdoor measurements.
These are amazing results for a $1600 scope and easily place this particular Monarch ED unit at the head of the “alpha” class optically in almost every way except aperture size. It’s certainly by far the best scope I’ve seen in its aperture class, regardless of price. I can’t say what percentage of other Monarch units are this good, but finding just one specimen means that the optical design is not a limiting factor, as it appears to be for all the other medium priced scopes as well as most of the very expensive ones I’ve seen.
Now for a caveat. While the 20-60x zoom is excellent in most respects it's only average when it comes to lateral color. I mounted it on my Stowaway and compared it to five other zooms I have around. The Nikon zoom is completely clear of CA across about the center 6-7 degrees of AFOV, but outside that area the lateral color gradually reaches what I would call a moderate level at about 6 degrees off axis and is what I would call moderately high at the field edge. That’s similar to my old Nikon 25-75x MC zoom, so not terrible like my Pentax XF and Brunton ICON (Kamakura) zooms, but not as good as the Baader Hyperion, which has very little lateral color except near the field edge. I was able to determine that virtually all the lateral color in the Nikon scope image comes from the eyepiece by mounting the Baader Hyperion on the Nikon scope body. The Baader performed just as well matched with the Nikon objective lens as it does with the Stowaway. If I could find a way I would certainly use the Hyperion instead of the “kit zoom” (yes, the Hyperion does reach infinity focus).
Unfortunately, unlike in the UK and probably most other places in the world the Nikon marketing geniuses in the US do not sell the Monarch body alone, much less provide a 1.25” adapter which could easily be accommodated by the large bayonet mount. The scope has to be purchased here with the 20-60x zoom or a fixed 30x with a reticle. The optional wide angle 30-60x zoom and a fixed 38x eyepiece have be bought as expensive extra items. On paper the 30-60x looks interesting, but its lateral color might be worse or there might be some other problem that makes it less desirable than the standard zoom, which actually performs pretty well overall, very much like the old MC with longer eye relief.
I can’t think of much else to say about this scope. For once a scope does exactly what it’s supposed to do. Scopes with problems require more writing.
Henry Link
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