spotting-scope, rangeI am planning on purchasing a spotting scope in the near future. I typically shoot at 50-100 yards. I’m a little confused as to what magnification I should look for. How do I decide what magnification is best for my use? Is there a formula?
Be careful you don’t inadvertently choose too high a magnification for your spotting scope. And I say this as a guy who has is always wanting more magnification in his rifle scopes.
For spotting scopes, somewhere between 20X and 25X is what is most commonly used for 1000 yards shooting. I would suggest that you use something similar for 100 yard shooting.
The ability to resolve detail (be that bullet holes, mirage etc) is much more dependent on the clarity/sharpness of the the image than the magnification used. That is why seemingly-modest magnifications are used even for 1000 yard shooting; the difference between a $1000-$2000 25X scope and a $200 25X scope is not the magnification, it is mostly image sharpness (and to a certain extent waterproofedness).
Many low end scopes are variable magnification, with top end magnifications of 60X or 80X. In my experience the high end magnification of these scopes simply makes the field of view smaller and the image bigger and cloudier - it does not improve your ability to resolve small details.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with variable magnification and I wouldn’t avoid buying a scope because it is a variable, but I also would not consider having variable magnification to be a feature worth paying for at all.
Bird watchers and photographers are bigger users of spotting scopes than shooters. Many features important to them such as colour trueness, fringing, low-light performance etc, aren’t actually very important to shooters (in my opinion). One can optimize a scope selection for shooting performance differently than birders or photographers.
In addition to magnification there are some other considerations. Eye relief is one of the most important (this means how close your eyeball has to be to the eyepiece in order to see the image). Most low-cost scopes require that your eye be so close as to be nearly touching the eyepiece. Not only is this impossible to use if you wear glasses, even if you don’t wear glasses it is very inconvenient. You will find it much easier to use a scope that allows for an inch or even more of eye relied.
Some scopes are “straight through” (like a rifle scope), others have the eyepiece at a 45 degree angle. In most shooting positions it requires less shifting from a shooting position to look through a 45 degree eyepiece.
At 50-100 yards, you don’t need much power. I can spot .223 holes at 50 using a pair of 10 power binoculars. A good 20 power spotter should do you out to 100, easily. The optical quality of the scope is more important than magnification.
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