Swarovski 17-40 ATC

[Hunt4lyfe]

I just saw this -- it is possible it is you not the scope. I NEVER have any issue looking through any bino, and I always have to find the sweet spot for I place my eye with scopes. Unless my eye is *perfectly* aligned with the scope the view I get is foggy and smudgy. Wide angle oculars (like the ATC's) make it worse. I have a STC and ATS with the 25x-50x W ocular. I also noticed on Kowa scopes friends have.

If you do not have this problem with other wide angle scope oculars, it is the scope. But do check. I think this problem is because I use contact lenses (hard), but it might be my eyes.

I've never looked through any other spotting scopes before. I dont know anyone that has any either.
I dont wear glasses or contact lenses but my eyesight is pretty bad. I need to go get those checked out also.

When i first got the scope it was kind of hard for me to get my eyes perfectly aligned but now that i have had it for a while its not too bad for me anymore.

 

[DB4405]

You can put a bigger bevel in the end that is closest to the focus ring and it will no longer bind up if you don’t use two hands. That’s what I did to mine and it really helped. I definitely wasn’t too impressed for the price I paid for the Kestrel to have it be like that but it was a relatively simple fix.

Hopefully Aziak has something better in the works.

 

[grainhog]

Did you end up sending your scope in? If so, what was the result if you don't mind sharing?

I've had my ATC for about 3 months. I'm injured, so before today had only been glassing whitetails from the house with it on the same fairly dark grassy ridge, day in and day out. Other than some loss of brightness and resolution at 40x, along with a bit more trouble focusing when zoomed in (i have a pretty shaky vortex tripod), I thought it excellent.

Today I took it out into much bigger, more complex country for the first time, in cold, dry, sunny conditions, and compared it to my 3yo Vortex razor hd 12x50 binos (my only other glass). In general, the ATC was still excellent. Substantially sharper and less radial edge distortion than the binos, especially zoomed out to 17-25x or so.

However, in the lightest colored terrain, I noticed a sort of black/gray 'ring' in the center that starts small, and then gets bigger, as my eye approaches the lens. It mostly goes away once I achieve a full clear picture, but at times it seems it's still hovering on the periphery or in the center. Everything was very clean, and no eyelashes in my eyeball or anything.

I'm certainly open to the possibility that it's my eyes, or somehow an artifact of the wide angle/narrow objective diameter. However, it was bothersome enough to make me come back to this thread. If it's an issue with the lens or coating, than at this price I would want to pursue warranty. Thanks for considering.

 

[bpurtz]

You can put a bigger bevel in the end that is closest to the focus ring and it will no longer bind up if you don’t use two hands. That’s what I did to mine and it really helped. I definitely wasn’t too impressed for the price I paid for the Kestrel to have it be like that but it was a relatively simple fix.

@Shooter264 what did you use for a "bigger bevel"? I haven't purchased a Kestrel ring yet - does it include parts to adjust the interior ring size?

 

[Shooter264]

@Shooter264 what did you use for a "bigger bevel"? I haven't purchased a Kestrel ring yet - does it include parts to adjust the interior ring size?

A dremel

 

[bpurtz]

I decided to upgrade my tripod so I could potentially shoot off of it with an ARCA rail.

I think the ATC Swaro will pan fine on the RRS Anvil & Scout head setup.