Spotter eye pieces

[Jake Leibke]

I think I have made up my mind and will get a Vortex Razor scope.

Does anyone make after market eye pieces? Are some eye pieces interchangeable between brands?

Anyone use a wide angle eye piece? Advantages? Disadvantages?

I had thought about getting a wide angle eye piece. From what I have read conditions need to be just right to use full magnification anyway? Would I be losing that much glassing ability by going from a 20-60 to 25-50 wide angle?

 

[Aron Snyder]

I would get the wide for sure. You won't gain much with the 20x60 because the clarity is lacking at full power.

 

[Matt Cashell]

Jake,

The Vortex bayonet is similar to the Swarovski and Zen Ray bayonets, but I have not tried to interchange them. In fact, the 20-60 is a duplicate of the Swarovski design. Wide Angle eyepieces are especially useful for digiscoping, but I like having 60x when I am really scrutinizing something.

I own a Razor HD spotter that has outstanding resolution right up to 60x. However, I know that some defective Razors have made it to consumers. Luckily Vortex backs up their products with outstanding customer service, and they will take care of a lemon.

In 2009, Bird Watchers Digest evaluated the top spotters and put the Razor on the level of the "Bigs."

The article is here:

http://www.birdwatching.com/optics/2009scopes_high/best_resolution_kowa.html

Here is an excerpt (after they note the Kowa 88's superiority):

"It's worth noting that the next-highest-scoring five scopes on resolution — Zeiss, Leica, Swarovski, Vortex, and the 77mm Kowa — scored so close to each other that it required 100x magnification to rank them. We believe that the resolution differences between these scopes would not often be discernible in the field. "

Keep in mind, this is just their testing group's opinion, and mine is mine, but I have never regretted purchasing the Razor, and I use it at 60x often. The FOV is quite wide at 20x, and I like it with the standard zoom.

 

[Jake Leibke]

BB- I was looking at the Zen-Ray site the other day, after I read a post about a Chinese company manufacturing product for many brand names. Looks like the Vortex and Zens are the same scope under different brands? How do they compare to each other?

Also if a Vortex scope would accept a swarovski eye piece do you think there would be any gains or losses in the scopes effectiveness?

 

[Matt Cashell]

Jake,

There are definitely similarities between the Zen and the Vortex, but an optics guru on a birding site examined their internals and found them to be different. Also the Vortex is made in Japan while the Zen is made in China. That doesn't mean that some components of both don't come from the same place, they likely could. A big difference I have seen is that the Vortex uses a full triplet objective while the Zen lists a doublet. The same person was unable to fully seat his 30x Swaro eyepiece on the Vortex. However, I have read that others have had the eyepieces fully interchange.

Someone I know has the Zen, and he says it is the Razor's equal, but I haven't compared them directly. People commonly use the Swaro 30x fixed eyepiece on the Zen body.

The image with the Vortex is so good, I don't think it would be a real benefit to use a Swaro eyepiece, unless you were going for the WA zoom, and you knew for sure it would fit.

 

[Jake Leibke]

Thanks for the input and help.