Scope Power/Objective question

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regulate34

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Well happy new year.
last night after tilting a few. I got into a conversation with a guy about scopes.

He uses a 4.5-32x50mm scope on a 7mm rem mag. he says that anything less then a 50mm lens is a waste. he claims he hunts think woods on 4.5-6 power with no problems. this is contrary to everything I have searched and how I hunt and everyone I have hunted with. in my years the biggest scope I have hunted with was 7-21x40 found it to be way too much power. most magnification I have seen of hunting partners guns is 14X.

he also said that a 7mmRM case is a 30-06 case. I called bulls**t. and proved him wrong.

he also said 30-06 and my soon to be here 375 Ruger are 300 yrd guns MAX. I laughed at him
some how he shoots moose at 600yrds with a 7mm RM?

now here is a part that got me.

He claims that the human eye sees 3.5x mag. and that any thing less then that in a scope will make the target look further away than it really is. This morning I am still trying to wrap my head around this concept. Needless to say I am confused.

This got brought up because of my choice of a 2.5-8x36mm VX-3. To go on a 375 Ruger.
His claims with that scope is not enough power and with 36mm OJ you wont be able to find game in the scope and have crap light transmission


*** I know this is rambling but I think he is wrong on most accounts. Just me and the old lady out here with no one else in the gun world to bounce this off of.****
 
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I think his beverages where having more of a negative effect on him than they did you. ;)

Glass quality, coatings, mag range all play a factor with allowing light in.

Just ask him to explain exit pupil to ya. ;)
 
I tried to explain to him the quality factor and magnification. like you said alcohol makes for thick minds.
In the end I said their is "Enough to do the job at hand and over kill?. Much like buying a 1ton Diesel to haul and 12ft aluminum boat.

try to explain that to a guy that owns a 1ton diesel and has nothing to haul
 
GOOGLE ROCKS

Exit Pupil
The circular image or beam of light formed by the eyepiece of a telescope. To take full advantage of a scope's light-gathering capacity, the diameter of an eyepiece exit pupil should be no larger than the 7mm diameter of your eye's dark-adapted pupil, so that all of the light collected by the telescope enters your eye. (The eyepiece exit pupil diameter is found by dividing the eyepiece focal length by the telescope focal ratio.) Your eye's ability to dilate declines with increasing age (to a dark-adapted pupil of about 5mm by age 50 or so). For those in this age group, eyepieces with exit pupils larger than their eyes can dilate to simply waste their telescope's light-gathering capacity, as some of the scope's light will fall on their iris instead of entering their eye.
 
regulate34 said:
GOOGLE ROCKS

Exit Pupil
The circular image or beam of light formed by the eyepiece of a telescope. To take full advantage of a scope's light-gathering capacity, the diameter of an eyepiece exit pupil should be no larger than the 7mm diameter of your eye's dark-adapted pupil, so that all of the light collected by the telescope enters your eye. (The eyepiece exit pupil diameter is found by dividing the eyepiece focal length by the telescope focal ratio.) Your eye's ability to dilate declines with increasing age (to a dark-adapted pupil of about 5mm by age 50 or so). For those in this age group, eyepieces with exit pupils larger than their eyes can dilate to simply waste their telescope's light-gathering capacity, as some of the scope's light will fall on their iris instead of entering their eye.
Click to expand...

Of course the lenses and coatings are just as important as the exit pupil, as far as light transmission is concerned. As well, a larger objective lens does not guarantee a larger field of view. As far as man seeing at 3.5x magnification, as has been previously posted, the person that told you that nonsense, is an idiot.
 
regulate34 said:
GOOGLE ROCKS

Exit Pupil
The circular image or beam of light formed by the eyepiece of a telescope. To take full advantage of a scope's light-gathering capacity, the diameter of an eyepiece exit pupil should be no larger than the 7mm diameter of your eye's dark-adapted pupil, so that all of the light collected by the telescope enters your eye. (The eyepiece exit pupil diameter is found by dividing the eyepiece focal length by the telescope focal ratio.) Your eye's ability to dilate declines with increasing age (to a dark-adapted pupil of about 5mm by age 50 or so). For those in this age group, eyepieces with exit pupils larger than their eyes can dilate to simply waste their telescope's light-gathering capacity, as some of the scope's light will fall on their iris instead of entering their eye.
Click to expand...

That stuff about the exit pupil size is bs even if it came from google
 
Why argue with someone who obviously doesn't know squat, and then re-hash it all on the internet?

Oh, yeah. I don't know what came over me.

Never mind.
 
I know what he's talking about with the 3.5 X thing. People are way too fast to assume that what and how they see is what everyone else sees. We don't see with our eyes, our eyes are light sensors that send signals to our brains. The brain then processes the information, and if it doesn't believe what it is shown it is quite capable of "correcting" back to what it knows to be true. The New year's drunk isn't saying that he sees with 3.5X vision, he is saying that he personally can't tell the difference between a 3x scope and no scope at all. Its easy for me to believe him, because that's how it works for me too. I did a informal test years ago with a bunch of experienced shooters, some two eyed shooters and some one. Given a low powered variable they would look through it and twist it back and forth until they were convinced that the size of the image was as close to life-size as they could get it. Inevitably we could look at the dial and it would read 3 or a tiny bit less. Some people would see magnification at very low powers. There seemed to be a direction relationship between experience; the more guys shot the more they were immune to the optic's tricks. Take a two eyed shooter who can look at two different sized images at the same time and just see just one. The next guy will think his head is going to explode when he tries to process the same information. There isn't much use for those two to argue about what the other guy is seeing, because they are both right for themselves.

I remember back to grade school science classes (back when the world was still cooling) where they showed a film on the relationship between what we see and what we perceive. One of the experiments was a optical fixture that the test subject wore that turned everything upside down. It took three days, but after that his brain flipped everything right-side up to correct what he knew to be false. If our brains are capable of flipping the world upside down, its not hard to see how it can decide that a deer isn't nearly as close as your eyes are telling it. It knows better and tries to make the adjustments.

It does make arguments over the perfect magnification a bit pointless.
 
Regardless of your eyes, a 3x scope will add three times magnification to your eyes. You might see bigger or better than others at 3x but you still see with 3x magnification versus your normal vision. It's the same with reading glasses, they are basically just magnifiers. Some of us need more magnification than others to get a clear view to our brain. Just because you can read without glasses and I need 1.5 magnifiers doesn't mean your eyes are 1.5 magnification...it just means mine need 1.5 magnification to get the message to my brain. Put my 1.5 glasses on your eyes and you will see by a magnification of 1.5x.
 
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The 2-7x33 Redfield Golden Five Star, that tops my .270, has been an excellent all around scope for me since 1989. I recently have converted to slug hunting from a (black interior) blind, so am adding a 3-9x50 on my 870. My buddy, whom has a lot more scope experience than I, as he`s always trying different products, told me that the 50 mm objective lens will help gather light, and he believes that nothing over 10 power is required in any Nova Scotia hunting situation, regardless of firearm. Hope this helps:)
 
Absolutely a 50mm objective will "gather" more light...it's just whether it's useable by your eyes that's the question.
 
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