Minox compact spotter?

One will never regret quality glass. The pain occurs at purchase, but the long hours of glassing hillsides is made so much easier when you aren't fighting eyestrain.
 
Oh, suuuuuuuuuuuuure.....I see how it is.

Three pronged attack...Kelly playing good cop, Scotty thumping me on the head with the Swaro banner, and Aleena shaking her head saying, "will you EVER learn?"

:lol:

And then the good doctor comes in with the "just take your medicine" slant on things.....

I need to get my wife to sign up here so she sees where all my hair-brained ideas come from!!!!!
 
DrMike":2lt073gu said:
One will never regret quality glass. The pain occurs at purchase, but the long hours of glassing hillsides is made so much easier when you aren't fighting eyestrain.
Click to expand...

You are not kidding about that Mike. The eye strain from looking through glass for 8+ hours a day is what makes me err on that side. If you aren't looking through glass, your not seeing alot of elk..

tddeangelo":2lt073gu said:
Oh, suuuuuuuuuuuuure.....I see how it is.

Three pronged attack...Kelly playing good cop, Scotty thumping me on the head with the Swaro banner, and Aleena shaking her head saying, "will you EVER learn?"

:lol:

And then the good doctor comes in with the "just take your medicine" slant on things.....

I need to get my wife to sign up here so she sees where all my hair-brained ideas come from!!!!!
Click to expand...

Tom, I totally understand about the price of glass buddy. Trust me, it isn't easy for someone to swallow, but I do see it as a lifetime purchase that will pay for itself over our lifetime.

Speaking of Swaro, I would honestly rather go with the Zeiss Victory Spotters. I have the Swaro ATM 20x60HD. While it is AWESOME, the Zeiss is better. Maybe it is just my eyes, but I think I would rather get one of them..

Now, take your meds!
 
I have always believed, and my eyes tell me, that in rifle scopes, Swarovski is tops. In binoculars and spotting scopes, Zeiss leads the pack. The choice is clear to me. This is not condemning Swarovski spotting scopes, they are great. However, Zeiss is excellent. On the other hand, I do have a goodly number of Swarovski rifle scopes and none of the new Zeiss Victory scopes.
 
Dub and the rest. We used to have Kowa's in our Long Range kit. They were/are excellent scopes. They are very light weight pieces of gear and had excellent optics. Not quite the Swaro/Zeiss, but VERY good nonetheless. I wouldn't turn one down. Again, I don't know a ton about them other than what we had, but they were very good scopes. I would certainly look at them deals for sure. I still think Kowa makes optics that we use, I just couldn't tell you the model. For what its worth, the Kowa's we used were brighter and much cleared than the MK4 Leupolds we had in similar kits, but the MK4's had a mil dot config for ranging targets. Just an FYI, don't know anything about the CL Kowa Dub posted, but it might be worth a look?
 
I know I hear Kowa mentioned often in Service Rifle circles, but don't know much about them, really.
 
Kowa is one of those brands you hear a bit about if you know any birders. Those folks make us look stupid when it comes to optics, by the way. Comparatively, we're using paper towel tubes and cellophane, with fishing line for crosshairs, compared to what they're using, most of the time...They are absolutely crazy about glass. I remember looking through my professor's $900 (back in the 80s!) pair of B&L binos during my 500-level ornithology class and finally "getting it" as far as optics are concerned. Wow, what a difference good glass makes.
 
After talking to Tom and thinking about things a bit more, I'm going to have to let him off the hook a bit.

We all know that buying a top 3 makers spotter should be a no brainer and a no lose situation, I just don't think its the best fit for Tom at this point. With that said, I'd like to suggest the following makers.

Nikon
Pentax
Minox
Kowa
Zen Ray
Vortex

Personally I went through this issue last fall. Couldn't swing a Big 3 but wanted something that would perform well for what I did have to spend. Both Leupold in the Kenai and Vortex Viper ended up in my final 2. I did end up with a 20-60x80 Viper HD and I am loving it. A Swaro/Zeiss it is not, but I don't expect it to be.
 
SJB358":32p4lfhy said:
DrMike":32p4lfhy said:
One will never regret quality glass. The pain occurs at purchase, but the long hours of glassing hillsides is made so much easier when you aren't fighting eyestrain.
Click to expand...

You are not kidding about that Mike. The eye strain from looking through glass for 8+ hours a day is what makes me err on that side. If you aren't looking through glass, your not seeing alot of elk..

tddeangelo":32p4lfhy said:
Oh, suuuuuuuuuuuuure.....I see how it is.

Three pronged attack...Kelly playing good cop, Scotty thumping me on the head with the Swaro banner, and Aleena shaking her head saying, "will you EVER learn?"

:lol:

And then the good doctor comes in with the "just take your medicine" slant on things.....

I need to get my wife to sign up here so she sees where all my hair-brained ideas come from!!!!!
Click to expand...

Tom, I totally understand about the price of glass buddy. Trust me, it isn't easy for someone to swallow, but I do see it as a lifetime purchase that will pay for itself over our lifetime.

Speaking of Swaro, I would honestly rather go with the Zeiss Victory Spotters. I have the Swaro ATM 20x60HD. While it is AWESOME, the Zeiss is better. Maybe it is just my eyes, but I think I would rather get one of them..

Now, take your meds!
Click to expand...

Scotty, I am just the opposite. I dont own these but have access to them and I prefer the Swaro STM 80 with high definition glass over the Zeiss Victory 85 Diascope. these are the only two I can compare to each other but in this particular case the Swaro works better for me. I personally own a Viper just like Kellys and like it a lot.
 
Tom, I am another one who prefers the Swaro over the Zeiss. We sold our Zeiss spotter and bought a Swaro after using our friends Swaro spotter in Montana last year. However, everyone has different tastes and prefers different scopes, rifles spotters, which probably is why there are so many options available to us, and thats a good thing.

Best of luck Tom in your search for the perfect spotter--for you
 
I have two spotting scopes-Swaro to glass from the truck and Leupold gold ring 15-30 for back packing and range work. The Leupold is nice and light maybe a 1/3 the weight of the Swaro. I can carry the 15-30 all day in my pack with a light tripod and do not notice the weight.

I friend of mine who guides for elk up in Oregon uses a Leupold HD 12-40. This is a very nice scope as well. I have noted that when looking at elk at great distance even at 20-30 degrees, there are heat waves when at 60x. With that said, I would use the Leupold HD any day.

Personally, I would be sure to look through the glass before buying.
Good luck finding the perfect scope.
 
I have 2 sets of Minox binos, a cheaper set of 8x43's to keep in my truck and a high end set of 13x56's for big eyes while scouting. I've been very impressed with their quality for the price paid. I can say the same for the Vortex products I've bought.

My hunting partner I go out west with and I worked out a system to split the cost up a little. I bought the big eye binos and a Nikon ED50 spotter with the 13-30x eyepiece. He bought the Vortex Razor HD 20-60x85 spotter and we both have good 8x binoculars also. This way we can mix and match to be set-up for most anything together, or borrow from each other if only one of us is going on the hunt.

For a compact spotter I really like my Nikon ED50. I did a ton of research and everything I found kept putting this at the top of the class of compacts. I had a Leupold Sequoia before this, and it didn't compare with the Nikon in any category. Low light performance is amazing in a 50mm scope and it doesn't lose any clarity at 30x that I can see. My old scope was useless past 25x. I'd like to get one of the 13-40x eyepieces for it, I think the glass is good enough to use 40x fine. I picked mine up refurbished from Natchez shooters supply for $368 and then sold the eyepiece it came with and bought the 13-30x on ebay. If I had it to do over again I'd have waited to find a 13-40x. Eyepieces you don't like can go right back on ebay to recover your cost. Right now I have about $450 in it after selling one eyepiece and buying the other including the shipping costs.

For tripods I'd check out S&S Archery's website. They have good lightweight set-ups and good video reviews on them. I have been using a Bogpod tripod to save weight with the pistol grip head. It works pretty decent but isn't real smooth panning and doesn't have a way to lock down the built in swivel. It's fine for checking out something I've already spotted, but not the greatest for scanning. I just ordered a new Promaster T525P carbon fiber tripod and 6160 fluid head from them on their 4th sale. Including my ED50 spotter it should all weigh in at 68oz or 4.25lbs. That should make a nice set-up for the mountains or scouting whitetail around home, at least that's what I'm hoping. I'll post my thoughts on the tripod and head when they arrive and I get to use them a little. I bought my Eberlestock J34 from them a while back and now they send me good discount code emails from time to time, saved me $52 on my tripod/head purchase.
 
dubyam":y7m6j7u8 said:
I'm not sure if you've made the decision yet, Tom, but here's another potentially good deal on a demo:

http://www.cameralandny.com/optics/niko ... =nikon6890

Notice the black scope in demo is only $299. Not sure if that is with or without the eyepiece (I think it's "with" but check first to be sure). Just another option.

Or this Vortex:

http://www.cameralandny.com/optics/vort ... er15-45x65

Notice that you can add the Vortex Dakota tripod for $.01 as an add-on.
Click to expand...

Dub,

I owned the Vortex you linked above for about a month almost a year ago. Its a really long story, but I had bought it as it was advertised as the HD model which it turned out not to be. Having said that, for the application that you and Tom are looking at, I'd say its a great fit. It does have the ED glass and I found it to be very good in low light situations. Considering you both want a spotter that is easily packable, but also useful under range conditions its a good fit. Plenty of power if needed, and still really crisp and bright under low light conditions. No matter the spotters maker, they all get darker in picture when running at the high magnifications in low light. Roll them back a bit and things really take off. lol Granted all top tier glass is better in this regards, but I don't view the mid level stuff as being a liability. Especially for those that are not using them day in and day out, year after year.

I've got the Viper 20-60x80mm HD version now. I'm very happy with it. The link you posted above is a very good deal when one considers they are throwing in the tripod. Vortex CS is also unreal if needed and that should help a bit if such things are a consideration.

As others have mentioned, if you can , look through them before you buy. Might be just enough difference in your own eyes to lean one way or another. Or perhaps you like the ergonomics on one versus the other as well.

There's my 2 centavo's. They were free and worth about as much
 
If you can, Kelly, help me understand what the difference in the HD and non-HD versions of this spotter are. I'm struggling, as both have ED glass (XD, as Vortex calls it?) and both have XR coatings. Not sure where the HD figures in. And from my perspective, using this for the range and for some hunting here in Alabama, and some birding (yeah, I get a wild hair to go birding now and then), and on my future trips out west (if I can ever arrange time and money in the same year...), will a 15-45x65 suffice? I'm pretty comfortable saying it would likely suffice here in Alabama for all uses I'd have. But the "out west" piece is the real kicker. And I'm wondering if the Vortex non-HD is better than the Kowa I linked earlier. The Kowa appears to be a stellar deal, as the eyepiece is $385 and the spotter body is $490 as cheap as I can find it anywhere. The view-through case is plus/minus for me, as I can always pick one of those up, I'm sure. A tripod would add another $75-150 to the price of the Kowa, so it's in line with the 15-45 HD Vortex, at $650 with the tripod. Decisions, decisions, decisions. The good news is, right now, it's just a target to save toward. The actual decision is still a couple hundred dollars off. I'm enjoying the discussion and trying to learn all I can.
 
Can't answer for the Vortex Dub, but 45X is pretty good. I wouldn't sweat it a bit..
 
Well, it's just become an easier decision - the Kowa is now sold out at CL...did someone here buy one?

I think the Vortex is the ticket, though there's a few others I'd like to look through when I get time. A trip to Sportsman's Warehouse in Chattanooga will have to be in the cards sometime soon.
 
"Count on HD (High Density) extra-low dispersion glass for impressive resolution and color fidelity and XR fully multi-coated lenses for maximum brightness. "

From Vortex direct concerning the HD models.
http://www.vortexoptics.com/category/vi ... ing_scopes

"For long-range observation, Viper spotting scope put incredible viewing at your fingertips. XR anti-reflective coatings team up with XD extra-low dispersion glass for images that are bright, crisp, and sharp."

From Vortex on the XD glass models.
http://www.vortexoptics.com/category/vi ... ing_scopes

As to the hunting question, only you can really answer that. I do not know how you prefer to hunt at home and abroad. Even those of us who hunt the west will disagree on the best way to go about it. I like having a big spotter handy in my pack now. Up until last fall I managed to get by using just bino's and the real kicker is that for almost 18 years I used cheap Simmon's 12x's....

I would have to ask a bunch of questions. Are you planning on spotting well past a mile? Are you wanting the best lowlight, long distance, performance? Do you want to pick up bullet holes past 300 yards at the range?

What I do know is that the 15-45x I had was to me a really good spotter for the hunter that got in a ways and like to have the horsepower to pick about his immediate surroundings. I opted for the 20-60x so that I could do more scouting work from the main roads looking deep into the high mountain valleys and ridges. I still pack this scope in with me, but once again I made a trade off to kill 2 birds with one stone. Having the 80mm objective on mine makes it killer bright in low light running in 25,30,45x scanning the ridges and valleys in my immediate area. I've got the horsepower to start looking long if something pops up as well. However, I don't think I'd of felt handicapped with the 45x version. That's a lot of magnification compared to 7,8,10x bino's.

As to the Kowa's, the price looks great. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say a bad thing about the Kowa's. I know lots of guys rave on the ability to pick up bullet holes on the range. Just a few of my thoughts and I'm not sure I answered your questions.

Trust me, I'd love to run the best glass Swaro/Zeiss/Leica, but its just not in my budget right now. I think I found a great compromise though....
 
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