338 Lapua Optics Question

Spuhr is on the list, but not until I get the boomer. I'll stick with ATRS rings for now. I've already over my budget for year, wasn't planning on getting a TT and a new rifle. I would probably go for the "made for sb" mount with like 44.3 moa? But I'm going for the shorter model the 1.50" had way too big of a gap.
 
Spuhr is on the list, but not until I get the boomer. I'll stick with ATRS rings for now. I've already over my budget for year, wasn't planning on getting a TT and a new rifle. I would probably go for the "made for sb" mount with like 44.3 moa? But I'm going for the shorter model the 1.50" had way too big of a gap.

CADEX also makes mounts with different types of tops. Not sure if that's up your alley or not but worth checking out. I have a Leupold Mark 4 IMS on my .308 and it is excellent.
 
All that matters for me, is that the portion of the lense I will use to view, aim and engage a target is clear ... and at this level of investment, it better be the same as when the lenses are centered. If there is a hint of edge distortion or "shadowing", I can live with that. The scopes I have looked and tested in the high end have pretty much been free of issues, except as described.

Can there be variations scope to scope... of course, BUT I am concerned when there is a recurring problem.

The TT should be fully functional throughout its entire operating range and I mean move the turrets into the corners. I have only seen one scope but was happy to report, it past my tests with flying colours. If yours doesn't, get it retuned.

OVERKILL, very simple thing to test... Just put the scope on a stable base, look at something a few hundred yards away... I prefer 1000yds. Compare the view as it came out of the box vs dialing to the max elevation travel.

Will take you a grand total of 30 secs to complete.

Let us know how it goes

Jerry
 
I've noticed some shading on my TT when maxed out as well. It's on a 22lr til Thursday (picking up my DT then), so with a 50m zero flat rail I have only 12.7 mrad left. Shooting out to 300 yards required 13 mrad. So 12.5 on dial and .5 on reticle. When maxed out I was noticing shadowing on the top and bottom and getting a good picture was much more difficult at than 100(+2.2) or 200 M (+6.5?). Maybe the angle I had to hold the rifle had something to do with it. I didn't really think anything of it til, I read Marcoman's post and I remembered it. I highly doubt I'll ever be maxing out my elevation while it's sitting on my 308, as I doubt it'll be effective. Maybe once I get a 338 conversion, til then I'm very satisfied.

My TT gets a little shading at the bottom of the picture at extreme upper adjustment as well. It's a thin crescent of black that creeps into the picture ever so slightly and will slide side to side with large windage adjustment. You could compare it to a full moon versus a one-day-old moon with shading at the bottom. The picture quality is not perceptively degraded in mine, however.

I'd say that Tangent Theta went with as much adjustability as possible given the lens mechanics, and were ok with stepping outside the full-picture boundary a touch. By doing this, they were able to increase the vertical adjustment range while still keeping a 95%+ sight picture. The other option would have been to limit the travel within the lenses' edges but have less adjustability.

I'll can accept what they've done. Normally, I'll never see that much elevation adjustment, and if I ever reach it I'll probably not notice that missing sliver at the bottom anyways.
 
OVERKILL, very simple thing to test... Just put the scope on a stable base, look at something a few hundred yards away... I prefer 1000yds. Compare the view as it came out of the box vs dialing to the max elevation travel.

Will take you a grand total of 30 secs to complete.

Let us know how it goes

Jerry

Any specifics regarding zoom level? I can do this when I get home.
 
My TT gets a little shading at the bottom of the picture at extreme upper adjustment as well. It's a thin crescent of black that creeps into the picture ever so slightly and will slide side to side with large windage adjustment. You could compare it to a full moon versus a one-day-old moon with shading at the bottom. The picture quality is not perceptively degraded in mine, however.

I'd say that Tangent Theta went with as much adjustability as possible given the lens mechanics, and were ok with stepping outside the full-picture boundary a touch. By doing this, they were able to increase the vertical adjustment range while still keeping a 95%+ sight picture. The other option would have been to limit the travel within the lenses' edges but have less adjustability.

I'll can accept what they've done. Normally, I'll never see that much elevation adjustment, and if I ever reach it I'll probably not notice that missing sliver at the bottom anyways.

Very well put ...

Jerry
 
And I think that is the point everyone has been making. All scopes will do this mechanically, there is no way around. Manufacturers will either leave this as is with an "obscurred" view at the extremes of travel, and expect users to understand this short coming to gain more travel

or.......
Manufactures will set the elevation and windage travel extremes with a mechanical hardstop to prevent users from seeing this "obscurred" view.

I'll take the extra travel everytime.
 
My TT gets a little shading at the bottom of the picture at extreme upper adjustment as well. It's a thin crescent of black that creeps into the picture ever so slightly and will slide side to side with large windage adjustment. You could compare it to a full moon versus a one-day-old moon with shading at the bottom. The picture quality is not perceptively degraded in mine, however.

That's exactly what I'm seeing as well. I just don't have the same way with words. Very very thin black shading, but it's there. I probably should have said sight picture as it felt like eye relief was less, but I'm attributing it to holding the rifle to reach 300y from a bench. Rather than a hardware issue.
 
And I think that is the point everyone has been making. All scopes will do this mechanically, there is no way around. Manufacturers will either leave this as is with an "obscurred" view at the extremes of travel, and expect users to understand this short coming to gain more travel

or.......
Manufactures will set the elevation and windage travel extremes with a mechanical hardstop to prevent users from seeing this "obscurred" view.

I'll take the extra travel everytime.

This is NOT what I am saying.. Big difference between seeing the edge of the mechanics which is what is described in the TT vs having lenses that are not properly ground and distorting the further off center you go.

One you can work around... one you can't.

Jerry
 
This is NOT what I am saying.. Big difference between seeing the edge of the mechanics which is what is described in the TT vs having lenses that are not properly ground and distorting the further off center you go.

One you can work around... one you can't.

Jerry

And how exactly do you come to the conclusion that the lenses are not ground properly!? LMFAO!
 
Test all parameters to you liking. The point of this is to prove that what you have suits what you want.

And you are happy with your investment. Turn all the knobs and see what happens.

Let us know

Jerry

Just got home from work and decided to test this. I went up to my attic with the scope and did the following:

1. Made sure elevation was at the bottom (which was actually a few clicks below the 0 it came shipped at)
2. Found a target several blocks away, this would be a window dormer on a house that stands out. Probably 800-1000 meters away from my place.
3. Set the parallax for the best focus on this target
4. Ramped the vertical adjustment all the way up until the stop looking for degradation in image quality. There was none. I also didn't get any dark encroachment that has been mentioned in this thread as well though the eye relief seemed to change a bit but that might just have been me moving my head inadvertently.
 
Just got home from work and decided to test this. I went up to my attic with the scope and did the following:

1. Made sure elevation was at the bottom (which was actually a few clicks below the 0 it came shipped at)
2. Found a target several blocks away, this would be a window dormer on a house that stands out. Probably 800-1000 meters away from my place.
3. Set the parallax for the best focus on this target
4. Ramped the vertical adjustment all the way up until the stop looking for degradation in image quality. There was none. I also didn't get any dark encroachment that has been mentioned in this thread as well though the eye relief seemed to change a bit but that might just have been me moving my head inadvertently.

Nice! The guy working Vortex's bench grinder must have ground your lenses properly. :dancingbanana:

D6C97804-8C93-4549-9E06-2F7BDDC5A561_zpsoduubel3.jpg
[/URL][/IMG]
 
Last edited:
This is NOT what I am saying.. Big difference between seeing the edge of the mechanics which is what is described in the TT vs having lenses that are not properly ground and distorting the further off center you go.

One you can work around... one you can't.

Jerry

I think if a lens was ground improperly you would notice it plain as day no matter where you are located. Dunno, maybe my eyes are "wonky"
 
Just got home from work and decided to test this. I went up to my attic with the scope and did the following:

1. Made sure elevation was at the bottom (which was actually a few clicks below the 0 it came shipped at)
2. Found a target several blocks away, this would be a window dormer on a house that stands out. Probably 800-1000 meters away from my place.
3. Set the parallax for the best focus on this target
4. Ramped the vertical adjustment all the way up until the stop looking for degradation in image quality. There was none. I also didn't get any dark encroachment that has been mentioned in this thread as well though the eye relief seemed to change a bit but that might just have been me moving my head inadvertently.

It's good to hear you have a good scope. I won't knock the Razors as they do bat out of their league. It was a Razor that piqued my interest in top-quality glass and all the comforts they afford.

On a side note, if you have a mil reticle and are messing around with distance estimations on buildings (no, I do not recommend this with a rifle-mounted scope), keep in mind that the lines between modern plastic siding is exactly 5 inches. Bracket a number of those siding slats, say 6 (6x5=30inches). Note how many mils the 6 slats measure in your reticle. Say it works out to 1.5 mils.
Take your 30 inches and multiply by 27.77 (=833.1) and then divide that number by the number of mils. 833.1/1.5=555 yards to the building. No, this doesn't work with stucco.

This is a very accurate mil distancing formula. (Inches x 27.77) divided by mils= yards. Simple but you'll probably need a calculator.

This technique is even easier when measuring an known object in yards or meters, but I don't want to go on all day. I just thought I'd share a way to measure distance based on 5" siding on the side of a house. 27.77 is a constant used to convert inches to yards.

We can argue about who has the best glass but I prefer things like this.
 
Just got home from work and decided to test this. I went up to my attic with the scope and did the following:

1. Made sure elevation was at the bottom (which was actually a few clicks below the 0 it came shipped at)
2. Found a target several blocks away, this would be a window dormer on a house that stands out. Probably 800-1000 meters away from my place.
3. Set the parallax for the best focus on this target
4. Ramped the vertical adjustment all the way up until the stop looking for degradation in image quality. There was none. I also didn't get any dark encroachment that has been mentioned in this thread as well though the eye relief seemed to change a bit but that might just have been me moving my head inadvertently.

Fantastic to hear...

Jerry
 
I think if a lens was ground improperly you would notice it plain as day no matter where you are located. Dunno, maybe my eyes are "wonky"

Of the samples I had, the lenses were wonderful at full down and windage centered... image quality degraded about 1/2 way up in elevation. Very obvious. Got real bad at full up.

So obviously a QC issue.

Nice to hear it is not design issue. But always nice to check your scope ... just in case.

Jerry
 
It's good to hear you have a good scope. I won't knock the Razors as they do bat out of their league. It was a Razor that piqued my interest in top-quality glass and all the comforts they afford.

On a side note, if you have a mil reticle and are messing around with distance estimations on buildings (no, I do not recommend this with a rifle-mounted scope), keep in mind that the lines between modern plastic siding is exactly 5 inches. Bracket a number of those siding slats, say 6 (6x5=30inches). Note how many mils the 6 slats measure in your reticle. Say it works out to 1.5 mils.
Take your 30 inches and multiply by 27.77 (=833.1) and then divide that number by the number of mils. 833.1/1.5=555 yards to the building. No, this doesn't work with stucco.

This is a very accurate mil distancing formula. (Inches x 27.77) divided by mils= yards. Simple but you'll probably need a calculator.

This technique is even easier when measuring an known object in yards or meters, but I don't want to go on all day. I just thought I'd share a way to measure distance based on 5" siding on the side of a house. 27.77 is a constant used to convert inches to yards.

We can argue about who has the best glass but I prefer things like this.


When running in meters it is a simple calculation as well....inches x25.4/MILS=meters.....30x25.4=762....762/1.5mils= 508 meters
 
If you look at the scopes the top 50 PRS shooters used over the past 3 years, it's very interesting to see the following trend:

Brand % 2015 % 2014 % 2013
Vortex 40% 22% 17%
Nightforce 18% 4% 5%
Kahles 14% 4% 2%
Bushnell 12% 20% 17%
S&B 8% 33% 36%
US Optics 4% 6% 5%
Leupold 2% 2% 5%
March 2% 2% 2%
Premier 0% 4% 7%
Steiner 0% 2% 5%

So, it doesn't seem the "S" brand is in high demand with the PRS guys.... :)
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom