Shopping Tips
Making the final decision
- The best all-round eyepiece for a birding scope is 20x to 30x. Because of the effects of heat distortion and loss of light, beware of fixed focal length eyepieces larger than 45x unless you can afford high-quality optics.
- Ideally, the objective lens (the one farthest from your eye) should be at least 60 mm in diameter to provide a bright image.
- Consider a scope with a zoom lens, but remember that you get what you pay for. Many modern, mid-priced scopes have excellent zoom lenses. At high power, top quality zooms give image sharpness and clarity indistinguishable from that at low magnification, so buy the highest-quality scope you can afford.
- Beware of cheap spotting scopes. The shortcuts the manufacturer made to produce a low-cost product will only give you poor field performance and a splitting headache. Today, a few hundred dollars will buy you a good quality scope, and if you are willing to pay a thousand or more you will get an excellent optical instrument that, taken care of properly, will last a lifetime.
- To support your scope, select a rigid, mid-weight tripod with as few leg adjustments as possible. The flip-lock design provides a secure mount for your scope and a quick way to adjust the legs for uneven terrain.
To read the Lab's latest spotting scope review article "Scoping for Optics" from Living Bird magazine, Winter 2002, which includes a comparison table of many spotting scope models, click here.
