Test : 14 longues-vues à l’essai

The 25th of June 2007, we decided with Europe Nature Optik to test 14 spotting-scopes (high and middle level of prices) in order to find their qualities and defaults, not to rank them. Bruno Tredez, a photographer, helped us a lot with his « beginner’s eyes ».
The chosen models belong to the more popular brands of the market, but the test was not exhaustive, as some of them (Opticron, Vixen and Optolyth notably) were not tested.
We constituted five groups:
1- top level large diameter models with a fixed eyepiece (30X generally): Swarovski ATS 80 HD, Kowa 883 Prominar Fluorit, Kowa 823 M Prominar Fluorit (32x), Kowa 773 Prominar Fluorit, Zeiss Disacope 85 TFL, Leica APO Televid 77 and Nikon Fieldscope 82 ED.
2- top level large diameter models with a zoom eyepiece (20-60x generally): the same ones
3- middle-range large diameter models with a fixed eyepiece (30x generally): Kite SP ED 80, Paralux PX 80 ED, Kowa TSN 821M
4- middle-range large diameter models with a zoom eyepiece (30x generally): the same ones
5- small diameter models with a fixed eyepiece (30X generally): Kowa 663 Prominar Fluorit ED, Kowa 661, Kowa 601 (25x), Kite Falco (22x).
The method followed was simple: the spotting-scopes were aligned and close of each one other, so that our memory can keep the result of the last model. The particularly analyzed characteristics were: the colours transmission (presence of a particular faint), the sharpness at the edge of the field of view, the presence of chromatic aberrations. But we also noticed others elements such as weight, robustness, defaults in the conception, depth of field of view…
The weather was variable, sometimes gray and rainy, sometimes sunny, which was perfect to detect defaults.