Originally Posted by
W.R.Buchanan
I have a Celestron C5 with a 1000 mm focal length, and with the 9MM eyepiece on a clear day I can see Sheep on Anacapa Island which is 14 miles away. Note I said "clear day" This combination yeilds about 111X and shows all mirage, every anomaly in the atmoshpere, and all ground vibrations as it is amplifying everything 111 times. ON a hazy day you can't see anything but haze
I also have a 26 mm Plossel eyepices which yeilds about 40X and is much more friendly, I can see bullet holes at 500 yds easily,,,, UNtil the day heats up,,, then I can see mirage easily and nothing else.
This telescope is a 5" or 125mm Schmidt Cassegrain optical system which is simlar to the Maksutov system of the C90.
The C90 would be an excellent spotting scope for both range and hunting. They are compact and don't weigh much and for the money are 5 times the spotting scope that anything short of a Kowa or Zeiss or optics of that caliber would be. Bunches of them on Ebay for sale.
Celestron C8's are considered by many amature astronomers to be pretty close to the best. The really good stuff is exponentially more expensive. All of the Celestron relecting telescopes are pretty good stuff, and more are sold than any other brand. Lots of bang for the buck.
For any of these scopes you do need a pretty solid tripod as ANY movement is amplifyed by whatever power you are using, and even ground vibrations show up as big movements, and make stars look like fuzzy vibrating balls of light..
In telescopes bigger is better,,, period. This is because the bigger the scope, the more light it can gather, and all telescopes are just light amplifiers. They focus a lot of light down into a small circle, Your eyeball.
However really good small optics are better than bigger not so good optics. You tell what's what by looking at the resolution on the edges of the field, preferrably on a hazy day outside. High quality optics will cut thru the haze, and resolve a target perfectly all the way to the edges, cheaper stuff gets worse the farther away from the center of the field you get, and the haze is still there.
I once had a Zeiss 8x-20 monocular you could see EVERY hole in the moon with it when it was mounted solidly on a tripod. I also have a set of Steiner 8x30 binos whcih are pretty good and I only paid $99 for them at Big 5 sporting goods. The Zeiss mono cost $400 and got stolen out of my car, and I miss it! It was the best optic I ever owned.
All that said, there is some pretty good cheap stuff out there right now and you always have to look at what you are going to be using the optics for.
If you only want to look at bullet holes at 200 yds then any of the cheapo 60mm spotting scopes in the $50-75 range will do you just fine. That's what I use, and it works just fine and lives in my Range box
If you are trying to classify a bighorn sheep from a mile away you better pack the good stuff or you'll be doin' a bunch of walking for nothing.
Zeiss, Swarovski, Steiner, Leica, Kowa, Fijinon, Vixen, Leupold are the good stuff. Tasco, BSA, the Russian stuff are the inexpensive stuff. The inexpensive stuff will do 95% of what you need to do.
You have to decide if you "really need" the other 5% you'd get from the good stuff, and then you have to "learn" how to get the other 5% out of it.
The great thing is nowadays there is alot of choices out there. Something for everyone.
Randy