Ideal spotting scope for free pistol (.22 bullets)

[manuel]

Whos best spotting scopes for 50 mts. range. I a free pistol shooter.
Sorry for the errors. I not speak english very well. Thank you.

[Paul in Denver]

Manuel,

I have a Kowa TS-501 50mm 20x Angled Spotting Scope which works perfectly at 50 YARDS for .22 caliber shooting.

I dont think the extra few feet to 50 meters would make a difference.

They cost about $230 USD and are well built.

www.kowa.com

By the way - your English is fine. Much better than my Spanish !


Paul

[Mark Briggs]

I had been looking for a spotting scope for quite a while (about 18 months) and finally settled on the Nikon Sky & Earth RAII 60mm scope. This is available with either a straight or a 45 degree eyepiece. During this time I did side-by-side comparisons with everything from Bushnell to Swarovski. For the money you won't find better optical quality than the Nikon. If you check e-bay you'll see Cameta Camera regulary offers the straight scope with a 20x eyepiece for US$140. This is what I bought. (I spent a long time trying to find better glass in this same price range and could not.) So far it has shown itself to be very capable of providing sufficient brightness and clarity to find all my bullets in the free pistol target at 50m.

Hope you enjoy your new scope, whatever you finally decide to get!


Mark.

[Guest]

The TS-501 angled is great for free pistol and it is small enough to fit in my gun case. I selected the one with the zoom and love it. One thing to think about is this scope will focus to 10M without a problem. This is something to think about if you plan to shoot with air pistols at home.
Lastly, you may want to bend some metal and mount the scope on it so that the scope leans towards you at a 45 degree angle or an angle comfortable for your viewing. I find that this makes the scope equal to a rotating head comfort without the expense.

[DaveS]

I would have to agree that the TS-501 is a great scope for the money and the main reason that I bought one. After using one for nearly 2 years, I still would recommend it as a best buy for AP. Not perfect, but still heads above most other scopes in the price range. My major concern is brightness and eye relief with this scope. Under controlled circumstances, the '501 is good enough for AP. However, for free pistol, you're often at nature's mercy with illumination. Eye relief with your shooting glasses is also a concern. Most zoom/varifocal eyepieces don't cut it for high eyepoint(eye relief). Before I bought my '501, I had the opportunity to look through some scopes used by the "birding" community. The Nikons are the favorite followed by some of the upper-end Kowas. Leica's flourite offerings are also in their top favorites. Their criterion is for brightness and eyepoint. I would have to agree that for FP, the best scope that you can afford that yields a high eyepoint with the maximum aperture would best serve you. Perhaps looking at Kowa's wider product lines with specialized,fixed focal length oculars for a higher eyepoint would be a good start. I don't think that looking at product lines that are using rare earth glass is worthwhile for our needs. Your main concern is easily seeing the bull, not worrying about chromatic abberations or other forms of optical distortions. This isn't about photography. Another thing that I would recommend is finding a good ball mount. Companies such as Bogen/Manfrotto,Giottos and others offfer some very good,small ball mounts that make setting up your scope much easier. I use the tiny Giottos as it's a very precise product. You might also look into the availiblity of a fixed,focal length eyepice with a high eyepoint for your needs. That's only going to be available on the upper-end product lines and not with the budget scopes such as the '501. You've invested a great deal of money in your pistol. It's worth every penny to augument that with good optics.

dfs