Anybody seen this before? Nikon Fieldscope snapped- Updated 8/26/2020

[Hill Difficulty]

I'd say the greater lesson here is understanding the implications of buying products through grey market diverters.

You can buy a grey market ED50 on Amazon or eBay for a considerably lower price. In fact, I have a 27x Nikon lens I bought on Amazon that was shipped from Japan. I certainly would not expect NikonUSA to support it.

https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-store/shopping-help/gray-market.page

Most optics/photography brands suffer from grey market distribution. It only takes one distribution entity in the supply chain to sell to another entity willing to sell without following the brand rules (diversion).

Once familiar with the concept, grey market deals are easy to see. Whenever buying used optics, I will always pay more if the seller has the original box and receipt.

Sorry to see how this shook out for the OP, anyway. Hope this is helpful!

 

[Newtosavage]

Another update- After complaining via email multiple times, they got someone to at least mail it back. So at least I can try to glue it back together and maybe screw my tripod base into this and suffer until I can replace it with a Kowa or Swarovski. Might have a nice Nikon eyepiece for sale shortly lol.

I was just about to say dibs on the eyepiece. LOL

I love my little ED50 but I certainly don't expect it to hold up to a lot of rough use, seeing as it's a hollow plastic body. But that's also why it's so light. Tough to have our cakes and eat them too. I'd glue that puppy back together, unscrew the helicoil and replace it with a new one, and keep on truckin' until Nikon is ready to send you a new one. But that's just me.

I've had to use Nikon's warranty service 3 times in the past 7-8 years. In each case, their communication was very poor and it took what felt like a long time to get my item back, but also in each case, I was satisfied with the result. The last time was a pair of Monarch 7 8x30's that I bought here and the eyepieces had about half the lens coating worn off by some very aggressive "cleaning" it seemed. They were usable but horrible in any kind of glare situation. I sent them to Nikon, admitting I bought them used, to see what the repair cost would be. They cleaned them and returned them to me as is. I then returned them again and made clear that I wanted them repaired. A few weeks later, a brand new pair of 8x30 Monarch 7's showed up in the mail. I can't complain about that at all.

 

[BeaverHunter]

I'd say the greater lesson here is understanding the implications of buying products through grey market diverters.

You can buy a grey market ED50 on Amazon or eBay for a considerably lower price. In fact, I have a 27x Nikon lens I bought on Amazon that was shipped from Japan. I certainly would not expect NikonUSA to support it.

https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-store/shopping-help/gray-market.page

Most optics/photography brands suffer from grey market distribution. It only takes one distribution entity in the supply chain to sell to another entity willing to sell without following the brand rules (diversion).

Once familiar with the concept, grey market deals are easy to see. Whenever buying used optics, I will always pay more if the seller has the original box and receipt.

Sorry to see how this shook out for the OP, anyway. Hope this is helpful!

Yea I didn't realize there was such a thing. But it makes sense now why it was a pretty good price. Lesson learned for me I guess. Ill probably stay in my lane and buy from companies I know a little better in the future. Just weird that you can buy a new Nikon product that they just refuse to offer any support on even though they are all over EBAY. You would think Nikon would try and shut that down.

 

[SikaSeeker]

Picked one of these up recently , I have the ED60III and it’s one of the best I’ve ever owned. Bit heavy due to metal construction but compared to ED50 it’s night and day. The ED50 is made in China and it’s QC isn’t great. The rest of the series is Made in Japan. The threaded insert problem is well known and have seen accounts of them spontaneously coming apart in two pieces. More than enough to be considered “rare”.

New ones have improved the tripod thread insert problem but unsure about the other issue. Believe the issue is the plastic casing screw mounts fail. It’s shoddy from Nikon, especially considering it’s a fantastic scope optically.


I’ve read few comments about glueing together and I’d strongly advise against it. I’ve seen glue jobs done to fix cracked casings that seem straightforward but ruined a scope internally. The fumes/ off gassing from superglue basically coated all optical surfaces inc prisms. It’s an expensive repair. That said, if the scope owes you nothing go ahead but maybe use hot glue or something gentle. Even duct tape is better.

My ED50 has some spots of fungus and I’m in middle of repair. The black ring that holds front lense unscrews to give access.

 

[Shraggs]

If you glue, many glues don’t work well with plastic. There are three I’m aware of formulated to bond - one is from loctite and the other is from gorilla both state on the packaging its use. The other is the job weld formulation for plastics.