Q&A for Minox ZP5 5-25x56mm THLR scope

[Dobermann]

What's amiss if that setting goes blurry at 15x and is totally blurred out at 25x but the reticle is still clear?

I still need to try my old glasses when I get back home. I switched to progressives a month ago or so.

Progressives can mess with using scopes, especially if you don't have high rings / an upright head position, as your eye can be looking up through the wrong part of the lens.

FWIW, Jacob from Rifles Only teaches to not use corrective lenses when shooting - his take is that there's a diopter right in front of you. Even if you don't want to shoot without glasses, you could try taking them off, getting the diopter dialed in for your eye, and then see how it looks - there's a chance it will clear up / the issues will go away. Not guaranteed, but one way to see if it wasn't the scope but more your glasses and head position.

 

[Nine Banger]

Progressives can mess with using scopes, especially if you don't have high rings / an upright head position, as your eye can be looking up through the wrong part of the lens.

FWIW, Jacob from Rifles Only teachers to not use corrective lenses when shooting - his take is that there's a diopter right in front of you. Even if you don't want to shoot without glasses, you could try taking them off, getting the diopter dialed in for your eye, and then see how it looks - there's a chance it will clear up / the issues will go away. Not guaranteed, but one way to see if it wasn't the scope but more your glasses and head position.

I'll screw around with it in a few hours.

The sensation I have now at low power is that if I could dial the parralax a little below 50 everything would clear up.

But then you crank it up past 20x and it's like going under water.

I was assuming this would work itself out when I look at 800 yard stuff on Monday but it sounds like something is up.

 

[RockAndSage]

FWIW, Jacob from Rifles Only teachers to not use corrective lenses when shooting - his take is that there's a diopter right in front of you.

This seems a lot more like a thing that works on a flat-range better than in the field. Also wouldn't apply very well to fast shooting at shorter ranges with handguns or carbines if you're staying target-focused.

I do set up my tripod binos and spotter like this though, for use without glasses, as he's not wrong about there being a diopter on the optic. But mostly it's about it being a PITA to use glasses with most observation optics, due to eye relief/eye box.

 

[id_jon]

None of that should be correct- they have enormous DOF and parallax can be set at functionally 300 yards and not touched again.

It's not unusable, just that adjusting it makes a slight difference. Could be that I'm looking more critically since it's new also. This is while wearing glasses too, so that could be a factor.

 

[Dobermann]

I'll screw around with it in a few hours.

The sensation I have now at low power is that if I could dial the parralax a little below 50 everything would clear up.

But then you crank it up past 20x and it's like going under water.

I was assuming this would work itself out when I look at 800 yard stuff on Monday but it sounds like something is up.

Definitely try without glasses on then.

And check out the thread/article on the Hide about how to set up a diopter correctly.

Let us know how you go. I personally hate having to take glasses on and off while shooting, but it does make using a scope easier.

Can mean you can read you turrets, but there are now turret magnifiers from BagBullet and MKM which can sort that out.

 

[Nine Banger]

And check out the thread/article on the Hide about how to set up a diopter correctly.

I got personal instruction on this from @PNWGATOR, Americas premier diopter adjustment coach.

 

[Dobermann]

I got personal instruction on this from @PNWGATOR, Americas premier diopter adjustment coach.

Good deal. @PNWGATOR knows of what he speaks.

 

[Nine Banger]

Good deal. @PNWGATOR knows of what he speaks.

He's probably thinking "this dude can eff up anything"...

I'll try old glasses and no glasses later.

 

[Formidilosus]

Do all you MF’ers having issues wear coke bottles?

 

[rbutcher1234]

For what it’s worth, I don’t wear glasses and my
scopes are perfect across all ranges. Either you are messing something up or your scope is messed up.

 

[Nine Banger]

Do all you MF’ers having issues wear coke bottles?

 

[rbutcher1234]

Posted here from the Eurooptic buy thread:

Unboxing

I received the two ZP5 scopes from Jake today. Upon opening, I noticed something interesting: the foam packaging was different for both. As one poster earlier noted, mine came in red boxes. Whether the foam differences or the package color matter to anyone remains to be seen, but they don't make any difference to me. Just something interesting to note. Clearly these are spanning different times for production or packaging.


Mounting

Tonight, I will be pulling off a SWFA 3-9x42 from my R8 and putting on one of the ZP5s. The SWFA is moving back to my 223 Tikka, so this needed to happen anyway.

The first thing I noticed was the size. The SWFA 3-9 is a nice size I think. It isn't tiny, but it isn't huge. Immediately, I noticed that the ZP5 is a much bigger scope. This isn't surprising: Form mentioned this in the original post and several follow up posts. Tomorrow, I can pull several other optics if people want to see size comparisons. Subjectively, (and because I do not feel like going to grab them right now to confirm this), the ZP5 feels larger to me than a NF 7-35 and right in line with a ZCO 8-40. It is a large scope.




Everyone here should be familiar with how to mount a scope. SWFA pulled off, NF rings put on, all screws degreased with acetone, paint pen, torque to 25 in/lbs. Reticle leveled with the stock, confirmed with a Send it and plum at the end of my yard, eye relief dialed in (more on this in a minute):




Scope all mounted, torqued, good to go. Because this is Rokslide, and exactly how this would go, our own little drop test happened right as I took this picture of the rifle* against my breakfast table:



The rifle slid along the table and took a small tumble, rifle impacted on the elevation turret and rolled to the side (Remember the ZP5 is a big scope, so the higher center of gravity caused the rifle to pivot along the bore axis and orient dorsal side down). Fall less than hip height onto a carpet with rug pad.

@Formidilosus can take a guess how this will turn out.....

Oh no, will the ZP5 fail? Will the R8 be the problem? Can't lose zero if you haven't zeroed it yet right gentlemen? Both will be confirmed. I'm sure the R8 fans are interested to see how the mount retains zero with an optic this size.

*Technically, I snapped the picture, grabbed the rifle to look through it again, popped the scope caps, then sat it back down to retake a more zoomed out picture of it against the table when it fell.

 

[Nine Banger]

Either you are messing something up or your scope is messed up.

I have an experienced second set of eyes available Monday.

 

[wind gypsy]

I dont wear glasses either, had lasik a decade ago and since then all of my diopter settings need to be all the way screwed in for a clean reticle image. I haven't gotten my zp5 out of the house yet but reticle focus and image clarity seem fine/good thus far from the deck where I can only see about 100 yds..

This will live on a gamer gun. I dont hunt at long enough distances to justify a monstrosity like this for that application.

 

[Dobermann]

Do all you MF’ers having issues wear coke bottles?

No - modern progressives can make for pretty thin lenses. But if you look even a few mm in the wrong place, things are out of focus - so you have to change your head position, for example, to read things at different distances.

Jump on a rifle, tilt your head up and/or to the side a bit, and you're looking through the wrong part of the lens and the scope will look messed up.

I know you're in the "you're only as old as you feel camp" ... I was going to post some quip along the lines of "wait until it happens to you", but I don't want to wish that on you ...

But I went from perfect vision to the whole world being blurry in a matter of months ... just had to suck it up and adapt.

 

[gbflyer]

Progressives can mess with using scopes, especially if you don't have high rings / an upright head position, as your eye can be looking up through the wrong part of the lens.

FWIW, Jacob from Rifles Only teaches to not use corrective lenses when shooting - his take is that there's a diopter right in front of you. Even if you don't want to shoot without glasses, you could try taking them off, getting the diopter dialed in for your eye, and then see how it looks - there's a chance it will clear up / the issues will go away. Not guaranteed, but one way to see if it wasn't the scope but more your glasses and head position.

Does Jacob wear glasses? I do, for distance and there is nothing more frustrating than taking them off/on in the woods. Can't see with or without them lol. So I leave the steamed up and water spotted bastards on and set my scope accordingly. I cannot master the whole binos with glasses deal so I take them off for that.

 

[Nine Banger]

But I went from perfect vision to the whole world being blurry in a matter of months ... just had to suck it up and adapt.

That's what too much time on Rokslide does.

 

[rbutcher1234]

Second of my posts from the Eurooptic thread:

Initial impressions before shooting

I said I would come back to the eye relief part. The second thing that occurred to me immediately was how forgiving the eye relief is on this scope. It seemed like the "sweet spot" for full field of view was much larger than other optics that I have looked through, and I have heavily used a lot of scopes (primarily NF, ZCO, SWFA, Trijicon, Elcan).

I found that in basically every position, from prone, sitting, kneeling, squatting, standing, no matter what position I tried and dry fired in, I noticed minimal change in visual perception across magnification range and position. I even tested it with positional par time dry fire on a DFAT reduced target scaled for the distance of my living room: optically, this is a great scope to get behind quickly and efficiently across all positions.

One poster said he/she was having trouble focusing the diopter for clarity across min and max magnification. I did not experience this issue

Reticle

A lot has already been written about the THLR reticle, so I will not rehash this. I will simply say this reticle is the most useful reticle across min and max magnification that I have seen.

My one complaint about the SWFA milquad (that does not actually show up as an issue on a shot timer, but has always bothered me) is the inverted german post. I always wished the reticle was flipped 180 degrees. So, without repeating all the advantages of the THLR, I'll just say I'm glad it's a 1.5mil off center german post at 5x.

I'll probably have a lot more to say about this after a few thousand rounds at higher magnification.

Next Steps

The next step is to shoot it. A lot.

When I zero this gun, I will bring my AIAT with me just in case the steel R8 rail gives any issues. Absolutely everything on the AI is torqued and glued together and nothing can move without catastrophic failure.

Special late season white tail runs for the next 10 days and we have a lot of management does to rightsize... this scope will be used heavily over the last 7 days of the month.

 

[Formidilosus]

No - modern progressives can make for pretty thin lenses. But if you look even a few mm in the wrong place, things are out of focus - so you have to change your head position, for example, to read things at different distances.

Jump on a rifle, tilt your head up and/or to the side a bit, and you're looking through the wrong part of the lens and the scope will look messed up.

I know you're in the "you're only as old as you feel camp" ... I was going to post some quip along the lines of "wait until it happens to you", but I don't want to wish that on you ...

But I went from perfect vision to the whole world being blurry in a matter of months ... just had to suck it up and adapt.

Oh no doubt. I had an in-depth eye test done, and at some point the drops made my vision awful. I asked the doc what the average person that wears glasses sees-

He said: “hold on” and dropped some more drops in my eyes, did the little lens flippy thing:

He said “this”.

I said: “THIS is what the nerd up front with glasses sees like!?”

He said- yeah.

I said- “how does he live like this”.

 

[atmat]

Y’all need to get LASIK. It was a life changer for me as someone who enjoys the outdoors.