My original question about $1k price point was somewhat arbitrary, but I really wanted to see what kind of interest can there be for a fixed power scope in the current market and see where it might have a place.
My interest is in convincing some manufacturer to make a scope that is suitable for precision shooting, but is lighter and more compact than what we have without sacrificing usability and depth of field.
A few things came out of that.
First there was an interesting and positive response to Lowlight's suggestion of a 14x scope.
Then, there is a fairly strong preference for a 50mm objective. Historically, there were several decent 10x50 scopes, but they were always shortchanged by some boneheaded design decision. I am a little concerned that at least one or two people associated larger objective lens with wider FOV, which is plain wrong. If anything, it is harder to get wider FOV with a larger objective (although easier with a fixed power scope).
When most current fixed power scopes were designed, 40-42mm was the norm, but today 50mm is very standard.
There were several other interesting things in the answers that are educational.
In terms of actual products, it looks like $600 or so is the practical limit of what people want to pay for a decent fixed power scope. A good number of people answered "Yes" to my original $1k question, but that usually goes down once the time comes to open up your wallet.
If I were a scope manufacturer, I would not invest into designing a new fixed power scope, which is why, I think, the conversation quickly turned to what an updated SWFA Classic should look like. I hope they have seen this thread and taken notes. Fixed power scope market is not very big, but if they play their cards right, the can have it all to themselves for quite a while.
There was a little bit of a discussion on switch power scopes and that is an idea I would like to explore when I have a chance. I think many modern scopes with large erector ratios are excellent, but they are complicated and I have some serious suspicions about their viability at lower price ranges, so I would really like to see some development with affordable fixed power and low erector ratio scopes.
Another interesting idea that I would not mind seeing more of is March's Eyepiece Zoom (EP). They make a target shooting scope that is effective a fixed power scope, except there is some limited zoom done with the eyepiece. You do not have a ton of zoom: about 1.5x or so, but the optical quality they are getting out of that thing is really stunning. The current model is the 40-60x52, so it is not something that will pop up on this forum very much. However, it weighs around 24 ounces, I think, even with that long objective system. I bet that if there was a market, March could make a 10-15x52 version of this scope that would knock everyone's socks off in terms of image quality.
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However, March products, while very good are not cheap, so it would probably not come in under $2k. I bet they could do something like this in the 18 ounce range. For me it would be very interesting, but I doubt it will have mass appeal.
ILya
