Rifle Scopes Christmas tree reticle question on high mag optics
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No. You only use those on lower magnification.
Typically if using the bottom half of the tree, you are engaging multiple targets and need the FOV.
Typically if using the bottom half of the tree, you are engaging multiple targets and need the FOV.
Because when you zoom in on a front focal scope... get this... you are zoomed in.
Surely your question cant be this dumb though so maybe provide an example of what youre talking about.
4.5x
10x
18x
29x
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He’s thinking that for something far enough to need the bottom of the tree you’d want to be at max power.
The common misconception that distance = necessity for max magnification.
Thats why they make second focal scopes. But it poses its own issues.
Theres no one answer for all situations.
Theres no one answer for all situations.
I think there is lol; just don't bury the last few lines of the stadia. Think about, why would I even need 27 power then? Why don't all scopes stop at 20 then? If I need 27 power, why take those windage and elevation hold offs away from me? If I'm maxing out my reticle, shouldn't I need to be zoomed in all that way? I have no intention on shooting 48" targets either. Just saying.
You would want high powder for magnification, magnification isnt a slave to distance.
In fact I would say its almost the inverse, most people only zoom way in when shooting close range paper and zeroing. The rest of the time they back off on the magnification to get a larger field of view.
And sure long range benchrest doesnt zoom out but they also arent using hold overs in the reticle at all if they even exist in the first place.
In fact I would say its almost the inverse, most people only zoom way in when shooting close range paper and zeroing. The rest of the time they back off on the magnification to get a larger field of view.
And sure long range benchrest doesnt zoom out but they also arent using hold overs in the reticle at all if they even exist in the first place.
I get the sneaking suspicion that if someone needs to use the last few lines at the bottom, they more than likely have the time to dial up on the the turrets or should've bought a Tarac unit.
Short answer, no.
Long answer isn’t worth it because you’re obviously confused.
It’s simple math. The required stadia simply won’t fit at 27x. So, by your logic, 27x shouldn’t exist. That’s not logic we can have a conversation about.
I was going off of other people's logic that 27 power isn't needed at that range; that was NEVER my logic, and never will be lol. I need it lol.
Its impossible for a FFP optic to have that much holdover at that magnification.
Its not like the scope manufacturers are just cutting it off. They can’t physically do it.
Then your question is moot to begin with.
You can’t fit that much stadia into the FFP fov at 25, 27, 45x etc.
You’re asking for the impossible. A SFP optic is what you’d want.
There is another forum this inquiry begs to be re-directed to:
"Sniper's Hide Stupid Marksmanship Questions", where no question is ridiculed.
Hang around here long enough OP and thick skin will be your friend.
"Sniper's Hide Stupid Marksmanship Questions", where no question is ridiculed.
Hang around here long enough OP and thick skin will be your friend.
Yea I hear you strikeeagle. Just from lurking on this site I see a ton of type A personalities just ready to pounce on people. That's fine, I'm used to it lol. My skin's pretty thick as I'm retired Army Infantry. We can give it and dish it out; the problem is that most keyboard commandos can't take it and get butthurt REALLY quick, so I just usually keep it professional and keep asking the questions until I am brought up to speed by people with more patience. If they say it's just not physically possible then ok, cool, question answered. I just thought it odd that the very tool I needed at the mag I needed was the only tool that didn't work lol Now I know. I'll just have to adjust around it I guess, but my eyes are starting to suck so lol, we'll see.
Don't confuse Type A personalities with assholes. They are not the same. There are plenty of both here.
How do you suggest the scope manufacturer not bury the last few lines of the stadia? Or, asked another way, why do you suppose the last few lines of the stadia fall outside of the field of view when at maximum magnification?
You do realize that as magnification increases the field of view decreases, correct? And, you also realize that with a FFP scope, the target and the reticle are in the same focal plane, correct? Because the reticle and the target are in the same focal plane, and because field of view shrinks when magnification increases, the visible portion of the reticle shrinks and you see less of the reticle. This is not some grand conspiracy to deprive you of holdovers at max magnification. This is a physical constraint of the FFP scope design.
I holdover as much as anyone and use Horus H59 reticles a lot. But for ELR I usually dial for the solution or if I'm running out of elevation I dial 20 or 25 mils and holdover for the rest of the solution. I had to do that when shooting my 22rf at 675 yards. 40 mils required for this distance.
It’s the Redwood of the tree-reticle world
H37 is your solution. It’s placed in the top half of the sight picture, unlike most other reticles, and will give you a lot more visible hold over at the higher powers.
The H37 My SB 4-16x42 has 14.5 mils of hold over visible at 16x; it’s on my SR25, which only needs 9.7 mils to a grand, which is as far as I shoot it.
Note: If you want to make little tiny groups or hit tennis balls at a thou, this isn’t the reticle for you. It’s designed to engage multiple “IPSC” sized targets (static or moving) at varying distances quickly.
I haven’t touched my turrets since I mounted and zeroed it (2+ years, I think).
Lol
I have rifles set up for dialing and holding.
My Nuke I dial almost everything.
My savage has a clunker scope with a Horus H-25 that I hold everything.
I honestly don’t trust that scope would dial accurately anyway,,lol.
Yes, I realize these things, I was asking why/how these things have to be. This is my first ffp/christmas tree scope as I got out of long range shooting back around 95 and really only did carbine/pistol since then. This winter I decided to build something since it appears that building a long range rifle seems really easy these days plus I now have a place to shoot it. I had no idea that maybe if I posted this, some would chime in and let me know that maybe, it's only some manufacturers that do it, or that it's a physical constraint of all scope designs. Reading individual reviews on individual scopes sometimes isn't time efficient when you could come to a board and ask a question to people that have been doing it the past 20 years with modern scopes, that can all give answers about their knowledge within say a few days time period.
To all of you that gave answers based off of your experiences, thank you, I appreciate it. To people like rsb or 308pirate, not sure what value added you think your responses were, but all responses like that do is muddy up threads and make them longer than they have to be, so when the next person that comes here to read and learn, they have more crap to wade though.
You should have at least done some preliminary research on your own, possibly answering your own questions in a few minutes vs a few days. Time efficient...You also seem oblivious when such solutions are provided to you in black and white...I have already told you what reticle you need and why as well as a manufacturer who makes such a scope. Everything you have posted tells me a traditional ffp xmas tree reticle isn’t for you. H37 or dial.
Also, you don’t need or want more than 10-16x when engaging at 800-1500 for practical shooting (you never specified distances you plan on shooting so I’m assuming the above apply). Mirage is only your friend when it comes to assessing wind currents at/near the target. 25+ magnification is used for target pid, milling for range estimation (range finders can fill this need) or fine target detail, well beyond what is needed to actually hit it. Unless you’re trying to shoot the fleas off a dog’s back at 500 yards.
@308pirate ’s frustration with you is perfectly understandable
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I hate to drag an expert into such a discussion, but here goes anyway. Hey @koshkin, what would a FFP scope look like that could maintain visibility of the lowest hold overs of a EBR-7c (for example) reticle at 25x magnification? Maybe this is like asking "how long is a piece of string?" But, maybe there is a layman-understandable formula that approximates scope form factor- given a feature set...
I get it; it's not withing the physical possibilities of the space within a typical scope tube/objective.
As far as being frustrated with a thread, that's fine. I get frustrated when reading threads as well, but I always avoid throwing unnecessary comments in there because they just don't add any value to the actual topic. I guess I have more patience than most. Thank you for your help guys.
As far as being frustrated with a thread, that's fine. I get frustrated when reading threads as well, but I always avoid throwing unnecessary comments in there because they just don't add any value to the actual topic. I guess I have more patience than most. Thank you for your help guys.
You know what clutters up the forum? Stupid threads asking stupid questions, like yours.
Basic user, it seems that most have answered your original question (some beneficial and others not so beneficial). Thank you for your service by the way. And kudos to you for your patience with some of the comments.
These are probably already things you know but just to reiterate:
In a FFP scope the reticle increases in size with magnification (the reticle is actually staying the same size as the target but as magnification increases so does the target and therefore the reticle as well). This is the main advantage of FFP, those marks for holds or wind are always the same regardless of magnification; whereas, SFP hash reticles must be calibrated to a specific magnification - there have been many shooters who have missed the shot by not having their SFP scope set on the right magnification when using some of those hold marks.
As others have mentioned there is a myth that long range or ELR requires high magnification, in fact, just the opposite is typically the case and this is because at high magnifications atmospherics (like mirage) begin to play all kinds of tricks and most shooters have learned that backing down magnification decreases that warble effect allowing them to not overcompensate with a distorted target. A similar situation occurs at higher magnifications with wobble - let's take the 27x scope for example and set it to 27x and let's aim at a 1/2" dot at 100 yards, even on a bench you might notice your center crosshairs or center dot moving around slightly and if I ask you to place a shot dead center your brain is going to perceive this wobble and try to compensate so that you take the shot right when your eye sees that crosshair move to dead center, invariably many shooters try to compensate for this wobble and end up not getting the best group because they think they must have high magnification in order to get tight groups (myth), but if that same shooter backs down to say 15x they notice the wobble seems to almost disappear and they find their groups actually tighten up because they are no longer trying to overcompensate for that wobble but trusting the reticle is stable. Learning to stabilize your fundamentals will help greatly with this, but those will poor fundamentals often think magnification will help them when in fact quite the opposite tends to be true.
So why then do we need a 4.5-27 scope if you're only ever going to use between 10-20x at the most? As others have mentioned some shooters like to have the magnification when they want it, let's say they are spotting for someone or they are trying to identify a target, there are some situations where the higher magnification is beneficial. Also, in the past many scopes have had a "sweet spot" which tends to be in the middle of the magnification range whereas the extremes have some optical compromises. Last year it appeared the NF 7-35x56 was the top scope used by top shooters in PRS, but ask any of them if they ever used 35x (heck I bet most never used above 20x) when shooting the course, and that's the key - "when shooting the course" and I doubt any used that high of magnification for long range shots. So why are shooters choosing the 7-35 over the 5-25 and my guess is they are mostly choosing the 7-35 not because of the higher magnification but because of other attributes of the scope.
The reason why some of the tree reticle disappears out of view at high magnification is due to the limitation in FOV, again, others have already answered this question but the manufacturer is willing to allow this compromise because they know most shooters who will be using the far lines of the Christmas tree will not be shooting at max magnification (again due to atmospherics at longer ranges causing you to back down on magnification).
Hopefully this helps answer your question in a constructive way and doesn't muddy the waters.
These are probably already things you know but just to reiterate:
In a FFP scope the reticle increases in size with magnification (the reticle is actually staying the same size as the target but as magnification increases so does the target and therefore the reticle as well). This is the main advantage of FFP, those marks for holds or wind are always the same regardless of magnification; whereas, SFP hash reticles must be calibrated to a specific magnification - there have been many shooters who have missed the shot by not having their SFP scope set on the right magnification when using some of those hold marks.
As others have mentioned there is a myth that long range or ELR requires high magnification, in fact, just the opposite is typically the case and this is because at high magnifications atmospherics (like mirage) begin to play all kinds of tricks and most shooters have learned that backing down magnification decreases that warble effect allowing them to not overcompensate with a distorted target. A similar situation occurs at higher magnifications with wobble - let's take the 27x scope for example and set it to 27x and let's aim at a 1/2" dot at 100 yards, even on a bench you might notice your center crosshairs or center dot moving around slightly and if I ask you to place a shot dead center your brain is going to perceive this wobble and try to compensate so that you take the shot right when your eye sees that crosshair move to dead center, invariably many shooters try to compensate for this wobble and end up not getting the best group because they think they must have high magnification in order to get tight groups (myth), but if that same shooter backs down to say 15x they notice the wobble seems to almost disappear and they find their groups actually tighten up because they are no longer trying to overcompensate for that wobble but trusting the reticle is stable. Learning to stabilize your fundamentals will help greatly with this, but those will poor fundamentals often think magnification will help them when in fact quite the opposite tends to be true.
So why then do we need a 4.5-27 scope if you're only ever going to use between 10-20x at the most? As others have mentioned some shooters like to have the magnification when they want it, let's say they are spotting for someone or they are trying to identify a target, there are some situations where the higher magnification is beneficial. Also, in the past many scopes have had a "sweet spot" which tends to be in the middle of the magnification range whereas the extremes have some optical compromises. Last year it appeared the NF 7-35x56 was the top scope used by top shooters in PRS, but ask any of them if they ever used 35x (heck I bet most never used above 20x) when shooting the course, and that's the key - "when shooting the course" and I doubt any used that high of magnification for long range shots. So why are shooters choosing the 7-35 over the 5-25 and my guess is they are mostly choosing the 7-35 not because of the higher magnification but because of other attributes of the scope.
The reason why some of the tree reticle disappears out of view at high magnification is due to the limitation in FOV, again, others have already answered this question but the manufacturer is willing to allow this compromise because they know most shooters who will be using the far lines of the Christmas tree will not be shooting at max magnification (again due to atmospherics at longer ranges causing you to back down on magnification).
Hopefully this helps answer your question in a constructive way and doesn't muddy the waters.
Put another way, in a FFP scope, you're reticle occupies a fixed angular view. What bumping the magnification up does is reduce the angular distance which through which you can see through the scope.
So wide open, the angular view through the scope far exedes your reticles size. Vs at max power on say a pst 5-25, you can only use about 8 mils. That's just due to the nature of the opics making your view of the world at 25 power about 16mils across.
So wide open, the angular view through the scope far exedes your reticles size. Vs at max power on say a pst 5-25, you can only use about 8 mils. That's just due to the nature of the opics making your view of the world at 25 power about 16mils across.
This.
The other day I was doing paper at 320y at max power to Proof a load. Then I caught some movement out of the corner of my other eye.... Jackrabbits... backed off power down to like 6 to track movements and engage.
FWIW, a 130gr Tipped Matchking moving at 2900mv causes a nuclear explosion to a bunny head at 360 yards.
And always shoot with both eyes open ?
There was no mist. Trigger break, recoil, thump sound, twitchy leg. Then a hawk dropped down, landed on the body and started chewing down! Saved him some work for his lunch!
There isn't a simple formula, really.
Generally, this has sort of been addressed. To see more of the reticle you have to have wider FOV. To be able to use those extended holds even when there is enough FOV, the optical system has to be really well corrected. Better than most scopes currently are. That is really why reticles where you see the tree/grid extend down 30 mrad away from optical center are a demonstrably bad idea (unless your application is area fire with a machine gun or something like that).
For conventional scopes, in order to have more FOV at a given magnification, assuming the rest of the optical system can support it, you need a larger diameter eyepiece and/or shorter eye relief.
I have talked to a few companies in an attempt to push a couple of designs toward maximizing FOV. I think there is a niche there to exploit, but I do not know if they will go for it and the best application there would be for guns with very moderate recoil.
Of the current high end riflescopes, the one with the widest FOV is probably the new March 5-42x56 that should be hitting the market quite soon.
Previous generation Kahles K624i also had rather wide FOV, though not as wide as the new March and not as good optically.
In the high end tactical review I was working on last year, the widest FOV on the same magnification was with Tangent Theta and Minox. ZCO and S&B were just behind them.
ILya
Holding my phone behind the scope. No trick.
Just like it has a sweet spot that your eye needs to be in it has a sweet spot where the camera sensor needs to be.
Seems like voodoo to me. Get out of here with that black magic.
