You scrub! Etc.
Just kidding!
I remember you talking about eyebox a few years ago and you said it isn’t a simple thing to explain, technically. A bit of voodoo to me.
This is what guys need to take to heart. They don’t realize doing so also hurts themselves.
Haven't participated in a long time because a couple of head injuries and the resulting inflammation in the back of my left eye have retired me from shooting (Doc says my shooting days are over, "you're shooting cameras from now on").
Watching this thread; seems like some guys aren't getting enough booze, and sex, in a hot jacuzzi (along w/a long massage), that stops arguing/fussin/fighting when nothing else does.
"Voodoo" is right, always wondered at how what happens at the back end of a scope w/eye placement ended up being called the "eyebox". Yes, Yes, folks are used to that, can understand the "eye" part, but don't know how the "box" part got in?
When the center optical axis of the optic/scope and the center optical axis of your eyeball are in exact alignment (at the right distance)/ those two separate lines become one line, you see what you're supposed to see at the back of the scope.
How the back end of the scope is constructed makes a difference in how the image looks but not in terms of how your eye is lined up to the back of the scope. You're trying to hold the rifle/scope up to your eye as steady as you can, but there is going to be movement, that movement is separating (ever so slightly) the center optical axis line of the scope from the center optical axis line of your eyeball.
When those 2 axis lines diverge/separate into 2 lines, that movement makes the image "dance around" as you adjust to re-align the two separate axis lines merging them back into one line. The two lines merge into one line, then they break into 2 lines, and "on and on", which is the dance.
The dancing around that seems to be happening inside the scope is an illusion.
There is no "eyebox" dynamic taking place inside the scope, the only thing you can see at the back of the scope is the light/illumination coming from the front objective, so what you're seeing is a process taking place outside the scope involving the dance between the back of the scope and your eyeball.
I always thought some catchy reference to the optical axis lines of both the eye and scope aligning/merging/separating/moving around in relation to each other would take the "voodoo" out of it.
Everybody is used to "eyebox", and that's NOT going to change, I get that.
BTW: If you were looking through an empty tube, you could see the light at the other end of the tube, along w/some darkness along the inside walls of the tube, but that isn't the case w/a scope which is full of glass which is projecting an image so when the image dances around in the middle of a "sea of blackness" (from your eye being the incorrect distance from the back of the scope) what is creating that illusion is taking place outside the scope.
When you're at the incorrect distance and adjusting your eye to the rear of the scope, the image of the front objective which is a small spot of light will get larger out of the sea of blackness until it fills the rear of the scope.
