At-Home Scope Testing

I've got a couple of the older Bushnell 4200's on hunting rifles, and as far as I'm concerned, they're a bargain. I think the second one I got was when they discontinued them, and I payed $250 or $300 for a 2.5-10x40. I wish I'd bought all they had at the store for that price. I haven't compared them directly in dim light, but they seem just as good optically as the vx3 that my brother has. I've never looked through a truly high end scope, but from photography I know how important quality glass is.
Kristian
 
medvedqc said:
the turrets cover are now in plastic. do you have spare to put alloy ones?
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The turret covers are absolutely not plastic. I have one in my hand, it's aluminum. A drop makes a distinct pinging sound and it has the feel of aluminum which can also be heard while screwing on/off the cover. Edit: sorry, I realize you may be speaking about the adjustment knobs on the turrets.

I've decided to test the glare resistance of these scopes. I'm going to position a 1200 lumen light 6" from the ocular lens at a 35 degree angle and we'll see how they handle glare.
 
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Well, here I am with a glare test. I've got a 1200 lumen light 6" from the ocular lens of each scope at a 40 degree angle. This is meant to simulate a setting sun.

These scopes are all set on their minimum focal distance.

First, we have the Vortex Diamondback. What is there to say? There is a veil of glare. This is a poor performance.



Here is the crossfire-II. As you can see, the performance is much better than the diamondback. You can clearly see the tunnel vision in this picture. It's still not a great performance.



Here we have the Elite 3500. It controlled the glare fairly well leaving the text fairly readable. Clearly bushnell's improved and fully multicoated coatings over the 3200 are flexing their muscles here.



Here is the Elite 3200. YIKES! About as bad as the diamondback. This model has good glass but was sold "multicoated" and not "fully mulitcoated." Sometimes that's marketing fluff but it doesn't seem to be here. As far as glare is concerned, the elite 3500 is FAR superior to the 3200.



Next up is the Vari-x II from 1983. It doesn't perform well. No surprise. These didn't have much of a coating to speak of.



Here we have the VX-Freedom's handling of the glare. This is the best so far.



Here is the glare handling of the VX3i. It's closer in appearance since it's minimum focal distance is longer. Clearly visible: the VX3i has super glare handling.




For a hunt, I would take the VX3i first, the Freedom second, and the 3500 third.
 
This is very interesting. I am shocked at how much glare impacts the 3200 vs the 3500, especially after the previous tests showed the 3200 to have a slight edge otherwise.

I have one of the Vortex Viper 1" tube 3-9x40 scopes that go on sale for ~$300 frequently. I will see if I can do some similar tests with that optic to add to this thread. I am now curious to see how it stacks up to the Leupolds, its priced pretty close to the Freedom.

Whats your opinion on the Crossfire having less glare than the diamondback? Do you think thats due to the tunnel vision of the crossfire, or the coatings used on each?
 
Suther said:
Can you make the pictures bigger? Would make comparing them easier. I can clearly see the difference between the Vx3i and the others, but its kinda hard to tell with the rest.

Otherwise very nice test.



I did notice the Crossfire looks brighter than the Diamondback, but its also zoomed in more so its hard to really say which looks better?
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Click on the pics to go to the larger version on the image hosting site
 
Suther said:
This is very interesting. I am shocked at how much glare impacts the 3200 vs the 3500, especially after the previous tests showed the 3200 to have a slight edge otherwise.

I have one of the Vortex Viper 1" tube 3-9x40 scopes that go on sale for ~$300 frequently. I will see if I can do some similar tests with that optic to add to this thread. I am now curious to see how it stacks up to the Leupolds, its priced pretty close to the Freedom.

Whats your opinion on the Crossfire having less glare than the diamondback? Do you think thats due to the tunnel vision of the crossfire, or the coatings used on each?
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That's really difficult to say. It's probably not related to the cropping/tunnel vision since glare tends to affect the entire frame. It's probably got better coatings (at least for glare) than the diamondback.
 
Very interesting test. Last year I bought both of the Leupold economy models, the Marksman 3-9x40 and the Freedom rimfire 3-9x40 and I must say I am very impressed with the optical quality of both. Very good optics for the money, Cabelas had the Marksman on sale for $319, not sorry I bought either one, very happy with both. The brightness and clarity are amazing for the money. I also own a Vx3 6.5x20x40 that is about 30 years old and the two budget models optics are just as good if not better in some respects.
 
What do you think of using a cellphone camera to capture the images looking through the scopes? My thinking is that the camera lens on a cellphone is similar in size to a human eye lens. As you mentioned earlier, it would need the capability to manually set exposure time, ISO, and focus.
 
Yeah, I tried that with an iPhone 11. In that case, the result was actually much lower quality. The real answer will be to get a proper macro lens which can represent the exit pupil 1:1 on the camera's sensor. I'll work on that. Cell phones really just have infinity focus, too. It may seem like they're focusing sometimes but not really. The cell phone would also have to focus about 2.5" distance is pretty tough for a cell phone. It sort of worked but it was not ideal.

While the overall lens size might be similar in size to the opening in your eye of the iris, the actual aperture of the lens which is the equivalent of your iris, is absolutely tiny; think the head of a pin.
 
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ALBERTA BOY said:
Yeah, I tried that with an iPhone 11. In that case, the result was actually much lower quality. The real answer will be to get a proper macro lens which can represent the exit pupil 1:1 on the camera's sensor. I'll work on that. Cell phones really just have infinity focus, too. It may seem like they're focusing sometimes but not really. The cell phone would also have to focus about 2.5" distance is pretty tough for a cell phone. It sort of worked but it was not ideal.

While the overall lens size might be similar in size to the opening in your eye of the iris, the actual aperture of the lens which is the equivalent of your iris, is absolutely tiny; think the head of a pin.
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i ve done flower and insect macro in the argentic time and it was interesting and time consuming i do not think 1:1 will be enough. the ocular are really small.
 
I was able to buy that VX-1 from a forum member here in Edmonton.

I cleaned it up a bit and decided to put it through the same paces.

Here it is in daylight high contrast. There is some aberration on the left side of the image with the trees. The center of the image and the high contrast area where the edge of the snow meets the sky and the vent have NO aberration. This is a great performance. The center of the image is flawless, with the edges showing mild aberration. I would place this above the Elite 3500/3200 and even above the Freedom in the center of the frame. About equal with the Freedom overall, and below the VX3i.

In person, the clarity is excellent. I would put it above all the Bushnell Elite scopes. To my eye, there's no difference in clarity between it and the VX-Freedom. It might even have a slight edge, but that's a close call. According to Leupold, the VX Freedom should have better glass but that does not appear to be the case here.



Here is the glare test; Ignore the crosshairs and their focus. I didn't level them or set the ocular piece for focus. There is some veil from the glare but it's quite managable. The text is still readable. It performs much better than the 3200 and I'd say even slightly better than the elite 3500. Not quite as good as the Freedom and nowhere near as good as the VX3i but a wonderful performance none the less.

I will take a low light picture about half an hour after sunset. That will tell the tale, but so far the VX1 is performing well above my expectations. It's besting out the Bushnell Elite scopes handily and comes close to Leupold's current offerings - so far.

 
Well, here is the VX1 half hour after sunset. This is really tricky because the last time I did this it was quite overcast. This time there is still colour in the sky behind the roof and the roof is more backlit. It's really difficult to compare apples to apples, here without re-doing them all on the same night. There is a lot more noise in this picture, and I'm not really sure why.

Suffice it to say, it did an excellent job half hour past sunset. Leupold claims the Freedom has superior glass to the VX-1 but I'm not convinced. At least with this single sample, the results speak for themselves.

 
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I have a VX-1 2-7x mounted on a takedown .22lr. Thing is almost absurdly clear, edge-to-edge, considering the price for which I bought it - about $270CAD a few years ago at Reliable. LOVE this scope. It's a featherweight. Clicks = reticle movement promptly and consistently. My only complaint would be the stiffness of the zoom. Takes a fair bit of push to get the ring turning, especially in colder weather, as it seems they used a grease which is more sensitive to cold than might be ideal. But that's a trivial complaint as I usually set it at 7x and leave it there. Guess a secondary point of contention would be the overly simplistic reticle - some holdover points based on 100 yards with SV ammunition might have been a nice addition, such as I have in my Burris 2-7x Rimfire, a very similar scope in several regards with very similar high quality optics, but which offers somewhat easier zoom effort and several lines indicative of 25, 50 and 100 yard POI with SV .22lr. Currently have that one mounted on my 9mm PCC as trajectories for 147gr subsonic 9mm are very similar to CCI SV .22lr, so it's practical there.
 
I believe with some scopes there is a noticeable difference between scopes of the same model. The 6500 6-24 for instance, I can't recall the exact issue, but guys were sorting them, even buying several to find the sharpest one and returning the rest.

On the older leupolds, some examples seem to be as good as anything made recently. I had a 3-10x42 SHV that I offered to a friend for a killer deal before I flipped it. His current scope is a VX iii 4.5-14 x 50 with side focus and 30mm tube. Over 2 evenings he spent comparing them at dusk and determined that the leupold was both brighter and had higher contrast to read text at distance in low light, for longer than the SHV.

I'd love to see some comparisons like this on VX5, VX6, , LHT, LRS Nightforce, S&B etc. I would even be willing to loan examples that I may have.
 
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