TargetTalk

I shot Free Pistol outdoors today. The shooting position is covered and at times the target (50 yards) was in the shade. There were many shots that could not be detected with my NG 20X33 scope. Has anyone tried the scopes bigger brothers? I really do not want to increase the power as 20X is OK but I would like like a larger diameter to let more light in.

The answer to your question is yes, a larger object lens will admit more light and would almost certainly be beneficial. For smallbore rifle the "standard" spotting scope is 22X60 and that is fine for 50 metres, but you do struggle a bit in anything other than good light at 100yards.

Rutty

A couple of club members have the next model up, and they are fantastic at 50M. Much more suitable than the smaller model. At 25M though, the field of view is much smaller fo the bigger scope, but still acceptable if you are just plugging the 8,9,10. As a bonus, the scope and stand is physically more robust and less prone to vibration etc - they seem to be very good value for money.

A couple of club members have the next model up, and they are fantastic at 50M. Much more suitable than the smaller model. At 25M though, the field of view is much smaller fo the bigger scope, but still acceptable if you are just plugging the 8,9,10. As a bonus, the scope and stand is physically more robust and less prone to vibration etc - they seem to be very good value for money.

If you're looking for good glass, the Nikon Sky & Earth series of scopes is hard to beat for value. If you look waaaay back in the archives you'll see the results of my testing, which was fairly exhaustive, thanks to having access to an excellent dealer nearby.

Bottom line is that for under $200 you can get a 20X, 60mm scope from Nikon, and its optics are at least as good as scopes costing 3X as much. Yes, I looked at the really big $$ scopes too, including Leica, Swarovski and Leupold and could see that for 8X as much money there was a definite improvement in optical quality. But you can be sure I wouldn't want to have $1600 worth of scope shipped inside my gun box and being thrown about by airline baggage handler gorillas! ;-)