JohnJohnson
WKR
- Joined
- Jun 12, 2019
- Messages
- 1,681
That's just a fact for both image quality and eyebox. Scopes tend to have "sweet spots" in their magnification range where image quality, field of view, minimal mirage, depth of field in regards to parallax, etc is the best. As an example, the sweet spot on a NF ATACR 7-35 is around 12-18 power or so, whereas the sweet spot on a 5-25 ATACR is more like 8-9 power. As far eyebox it's going to be more forgiving on the lower powers if it has higher top-end magnification. I'll paste an excerpt from a recent review of "alpha" high magnification PRS type scopes that goes over it a bit. I'll also link the review since it goes over just general concepts of what "glass" even is in detail. And keep in mind the higher max magnification normally indicates more weight so it has its practical limits.Something I have read in a few spots, hard to tell if its true like anything else. Some say that higher magnification scopes say a 5-25 will be better at say 12-15 then a 3-15 scope will be a 15,
"Question for you, do you think the NF ATACR 7-35 became so popular in PRS because all the top shooters were now able to hit more steel using their scope at 35x throughout the course? Certainly not, where the 7-35 excelled was in the sweet spot for long range shooting, what I will call the Goldilocks zone of 12-18x give or take 2x on top or bottom, this magic magnification zone yields excellent FOV and depth of field (DOF) while also having magnification low enough to render the mirage dancing to a minimum, and the ATACR 7-35 offers outstanding IQ within this range."