Hi Guys,
Thank you for your patience and encouragement. Hope you still find it worth your time...
Nightforce 8-32x 56 MLR SFP
Nightforce is known to us for its ruggedness and overbuilt construction. We saw exactly that, a solid reassuring construction with aggressive turrets for good grip in wet and cold conditions. The design signaled ”tactical use” and it had our attention. Although we also had our doubts, good glass usually costs a lot of money and the Nightforce cost less than the ”super glass” from Germany and Japan… What could we expect, and how would it handle the competition? Placed on a Customized Tikka 6,5x55 we set out to find out…
As mentioned the turrets are well made and very sturdy, we got an excellent grip with or without gloves, which were a benefit to us especially at the end of the day when fatigue starts to set in and slippery turrets causes you to miss clicks and get lost. It was simply easy to count clicks without having to grip very hard on the turret, less tension equals more precision and speedy adjustment with less error! Elevation and wind adjustment are generous especially for a 30 mm tube. Clicks were good, easy to hear and feel, although we were spoiled by March and we would like it to have slightly more distinct ”click” if anything… .1 mil increments is a good ”practical” standard even on higher magnification, which we appreciated after the March 5-40´s .05 knob spinning.
Parallax adjustment is located on the left opposite the wind adjustment and has the same rugged nice grip turret we like. It also doubles as on/off button for illumination. Feel and resistance is good and travel is reasonable.
The MLR reticle is straight forward and in second focal plane provides a good size thickness for 100 m as well as 1000 m. It could not be used for ”milling” unless calibrated against a known target at a known distance which we omitted to do. But if we would the hashmarks would do the job nicely. The reticle appeared fairly crisp and rendered no complaints from us.
But, and it is a big ”but” when we turned on the reticle illumination the light was really bright, and we realized we had to remove the battery to adjust it. We could hardly believe that a scope maker of this level could make something this impractical. We understand that this is something NF is moving away from, but not to be able to adjust illumination when you're in the field, in the dark is just ridiculous. After a while we agreed on that once the illumination is turned down really low it would do the job OK, and if you know where you shoot and under what circumstances you shoot this would be less problematic. And it did not bleed to excess when the illumination level was turned down to more sensible levels.
When looking through the NF 8-32 we saw what we needed to see in our field, there were no problems of identifying targets or spotting hits on steel. We could get a sense of depth in the field, but nowhere near the Hensoldt experience. It simply performed OK during daytime with no surprises as long as we stayed under 25 power. If we turned it up more the distortion on the edges set in, with color bleeding and grayish tone overall. It would give us a smallish eye box that we had enough of from March, but without the Superb March resolution. The Nightforce is however less picky with the parallax compared with March. A participant suggested half-joking that ”It is easy to adjust parallax on the NF 8-32 since it is indifferent in sharpness” He meant it was bleak, but on the other hand he would hit the targets he aimed at and he had actually more problems to hit with the March 5-40x56. Eyebox on the NF is not too bad, but stay under x25…
There was no question though that Nightforce does not, in our opinion, stack up against the competition in either resolution, contrast, color and sharpness. We found that it is functional and works well enough in each category, but does not excite or give you the extra ”pop” that we were so eager to find.
When we tested the NF 8-32 in the dark the disappointment continued. We had to stop shooting with it quite soon in spite of the large objective (56mm) It could not deliver a visual image of the target where the others could. The shooter who had this scope had to put down the rifle 20 minutes before the others. And he was the youngest of us with probably the best eyesight. He could maybe continued a bit longer if he had been less annoyed with the scope´s performance in dusk. But again, this was not a scientific test, just the impressions of the shooters during this day.
Backlight performance was fairly OK, but not good. We saw ghost rings and color distortion without the sun shade. Reticle was good and sharp though and that was appreciated.
We recognize that it is perhaps not fair to compare Nightforce 8-32x56 to a Hensoldt, March or Kahles, but when you have spent several hours looking through great glass, we just wanted more and forgot that against a Koenigsegg the BMW M3 is quite slow and boring. When we discussed the experience in the evening, we agreed on the fact that the Nightfroce 8-32x56 MLR SFP is not really that bad, it is just not as good as the best in the bunch.