Spotting Scope - help me decide

[parshal]

I've got a pair of Swarovski EL 10x42's and a pair of 8x32's. I love them both. I owned a Leupold GR spotter but sold it due to not using it much. I'm planning to burn my Colorado points for mountain goat, deer, elk and antelope over the next couple of years. I'm planning an alpine deer hunt for next year. I'd plan on a few weekends scouting and figure a spotter would be better than the 10x42's. I'm just having a tough time swallowing the price of a good spotter knowing I didn't use the Leupold enough. I know that I want good glass after using the EL's for so long.

What should I be looking at for good glass and packability? What would complement my current binos best?

Thanks!

 

[Flatbow]

put a KOWA against the Swaro and Zeiss, look thru them all and decide. The Kowa will be right there with them, cost half and be smaller and a bit lighter....

 

[OR Archer]

Take a good look at the new Vortex spotters. The small 50 would be a good pairing with your Swaros and not cost you a ton of cash.

 

[Solitude]

Plenty of used glass out there if you are not going to use it much and understandably do not want to part with the cash for top end glass. You may even consider renting a spotting scope as Swaro HD will only run you $100 or so if you only need it for a week or so.

Have a Leupold GR myself that I would love to magically turn into a Swaro HD, but given the cash delta can not justify it at thus time.

 

[Matt Cashell]

Check out the excellent new Vortex Razor HD65, rock solid build quality.

The Kowa 66 ED is another good lightweight choice.

 

[parshal]

I just spent some time reading the thread comparing the 65 swaro to the 66 kowa. When I had my spotter that I didn't use too much I was more focused on magnification and edge to edge clarity. It drove me nuts when I had a pair of GR 10x42 binos when I saw the blur at the edges. That's when I jumped to the swaros and have been happy ever since.

For those that use a spotting scope for scanning a mountain side for bucks or goats, do you prefer the wide angle? It would seem to make sense that would work best but I figured I'd ask the experts.

I do expect that I'd use this in the truck, too, maybe in Yellowstone. I've always had the plan to go look for wolves and they seem to use spotters for that. I've sat in the valleys there and saw how far those people are looking at wolves and realized my 10x binos were never gonna see a thing.

 

[Matt Cashell]

I have changed my view on this over the last few months of looking at a lot of spotters. When I was running the Diascope I appreciated the extra magnification (75x) when I could use it. However, the tradeoff was greater distortion and narrower FOV.

After using the WA zooms from Meopta, Swaro (25-60ATX, not the 25-50), and Kowa that are both WA and high magnification (60x), I really like having the extra FOV, especially when it is so great right to the edge!

The downside to the Kowa 66 is you can't run the WA zoom on it, and the available zoom has a narrow FOV.

 

[Bearen09]

We just did a test on these awesome scopes.....
The swaro was noticly briter and the focus was crisper at higher mag... You need all the right conditions to do these so called tests and we were at 8000 ft with over cast, on the second day we had real hot weather , so we got the best of both worlds...... Yep watch what you read because it is not all true..
The spotter is a real good one, but to say it is as good as a swaro.... I think not..You pay for what you get..

 

[Matt Cashell]

What scopes and eyepieces did you test?

How did you test them?

In what way did the Swaro "blow" the Kowa out of the water?

I am working on writing my evaluation, and my findings are what they are. Feel free to disagree, once you see my findings. I look forward to hearing your observations.

We just did a test on these awesome scopes.....
The swaro blew and let me repeat blew the Kowa out of the water.. You need all the right conditions to do these so called tests and we were at 8000 ft with over cast..... Yep watch what you read because it is not all true..
The spotter is a real good one, but to say it is as good as a swaro.... I think not..You pay for what you get..

 

[Whisky]

For those that use a spotting scope for scanning a mountain side for bucks or goats, do you prefer the wide angle? It would seem to make sense that would work best but I figured I'd ask the experts.

.

I MUCH prefer the 25-50x wide eye peice compared to the 20-60....I don't miss the extra 10x one bit.

 

[parshal]

Will the 25-50x work on the ATX scope? Or, only the ATS?

 

[Juan_ID]

Will the 25-50x work on the ATX scope? Or, only the ATS?

The ATX scopes have an entirely new design from the ATS/ATM series scopes. I wouldn't think anything would be interchangeable between the ATS/ATM scopes and the ATX scopes...

 

[Matt Cashell]

The 25-50 is only for the ATS/ATM scopes. The ATX does not take interchangeable eyepieces, but rather the eyepiece is integrated with the prism, and the objectives are interchangeable. The ATX eyepiece provides a wide angle magnification of 25-60 on the 65 and 85 modules, and 30-70 on the 95.

 

[Yellowknife]

I MUCH prefer the 25-50x wide eye peice compared to the 20-60....I don't miss the extra 10x one bit.

Ha. That's certainly one of those personal preference things. Although I like the WA well enough, I find the eye positioning to be a bit less friendly that the 20-60x Swaro for some reason. I believe others have said the opposite, so go figure...

The Zeiss 20-60x eyepiece I have splits the difference, being reasonably wide on the low end. (129 ft vs 99 ft/1000 yds for the Swaro at 20x) but still able to run up to 60x. Not as quite as sharp at the edges, but I'll trade that for the increased view without complaint.

Yk

 

[Racethesunset]

If you're wanting to supplement extended glassing on your 10's, and to cover a lot of ground, bigger objective diameters will be easier to transition to at the cost of added weight. While heavier, the 75+ mm's will tend to be brighter and have a wider FOV (not always though) for a given magnification compared to the compacts.

For scouring mountains, I agree with you totally. Edge to edge clarity come into play more because you can move the spotter less often, and typically enjoy more comfortable images even at identical field of views.

I think that the 65mm size is a good compromise for an in-betweener spotter, however, if you are backpacking a lot, the recommendation above for 50mm's are perhaps more valid, assuming that you won't be on it all day every day.

If I had more discretionary dollars, I would bite the bullet and go with the ATX system due to the flexibility of having multiple objective diameters to switch on the same high end eye pieces.

This is not to take away from Kowa or others, which have competitive offerings, although they are not as packable or interchangeable to my knowledge.

 

[Rizzy]

I have a quality pair of 10x42 binos and using them side by side with my lower end spotting scope makes the scope that much worse. I would recommend getting a spotting scope equivalant in quality to your binos or you will probably never really be satisfied.

 

[parshal]

I would recommend getting a spotting scope equivalant in quality to your binos or you will probably never really be satisfied.

Truer words have never been said.

 

[stephen b]

What is your budget, what size obj. and weight/ packability do you want to carry? Do you want one good all around one, or a couple sized ones for different uses?

Lots of choices out there. And like most things in life, and esp. it seems with these optics -there are always choices and compromises. And usually, like most things, it involves $$ and quality/ spec. variables. If money is not a factor- it often would simplify things.

 

[tstowater]

If you love the Swaro Binos, then stay the course and buy the spotter. I don't use mine that much, but I'm glad that I spent the money on the spotter. It's hard to go wrong with the brand that most everyone uses as the benchmark. IMO.

 

[Stinky Coyote]

Lots of truth here! Good advice. I rarely try and find game with a spotter, tripod or window mount binos r the ticket for me. Apparently using 15x bins giving "stereo" vision is equivalent to doing about 22x thru a spotter with one eye so u get idea that 10x in stereo is pretty awesome also, can tell u right now what is easier to look long periods thru! Binos all the way! I use spotter to judge stuff I find, either judge animal or some part of something that could be an animal. In that case for me I love my kowa 664, as for the use I give it it's a bargain for what it can do at 60x! Lots of guys dissect mountains with spotters, for them fov will be important! I'd rather carry binos 10-15x (higher mag for more spaced out country) and use them to find game and have a killer judging tool, some guys will even search for game at high mag at crazy distances so fov might be important there? Lots of this I can't comment on, we can have different eyes, I like the flatter image of the kowa and I prefer less fov as I grid frame by frame, not panning, to me looking thru the ats/m with wide angle and regular zoom I'm left saying to myself there is no way it's worth twice the kowa, in fact I'd choose the kowa in a blink even at same money...I might be getting less fov but my eyes just prefer the image, prefer less distortion, prefer less grainy mirage look due to too much info stuffed into the frame....I would not be able and have not been able to bring myself to spend any money on swaro product except slc bins...and I spend money on gear! It must be my eyes but I'm just not impressed with the end product(what my eyes see)....they make high quality gear and have a great name, image, rep etc. Truly only way to get it right is find a way to look thru them yourself! I am now a believer that too much fov can be a bad thing, bizarre thing to hear(and say) but my eyes want ultra accurate and flat images not warped and grainy larger fov type images I seem to get from the ats/m with both eyepieces. If guy has time to spare glassing a mountain which seems to be case I prefer the kowa. Your eyes will tell u right away...get them together and have a look. U may have swaro eyes...u gotta see em.