You know I think I have discovered what it is, oddly enough.
I'm sort of new to these gridded reticles. I had a good selection of "traditional" reticles across all of my scopes so I took the dive on the 3-27x S&B and got an H37. (Got a good deal on it - new). I bought an H59 last year, but this H37 makes the H59 look clean! I also own an MSR and a P4F - awesome reticles there, particularly the MSR. A bunch of stuff outside of S&B also.
To be honest, I should have my ass kicked for getting this with an H37, but that was the only stock available with the 36 MIL version and he lines appeared to be quite thing (which they are even at high-power - no complaint there). I'm slowly adapting to it to tell you the truth - slowly. I do not use the upper reticle intersection - I use the traditional intersection which is actually in the middle of the FOV, 4 MILs down from the top intersection. I am mechanically zero'd there also. I have 34 MIL's available to dial on a 375CT - yeah, I can dial the next county over!
Ideally I'd get it with an MSR if they offered it. One of my favorite reticles - P4F and MSR.
So anyway, enough of that... what I noticed is that if I only focus my eye on the central FOV (roughy 4 MILs in each direction), I can back the diopter off quite a bit, pretty much to zero.
I was trying to focus the entire reticle visible in the FOV - and that just isn't happening on full power. If I back the power down to 20x, everything is crisp even with the diopter ran out a bit. Basically it's a mind-trick I think. Your eye see's so much going on that it can't focus the entire FOV without tricking you into thinking the diopter isn't set correctly. Believe me, I've adjusted enough diopters to know when one is set correctly or not - the H37 in particular is like an optical illusion (rolling focus) almost in the 3-27x. Just too much going on in a tight eye-box.
With an exit pupil of 2.07mm on 27x, it's just too much grid to get good depth of field, for me at least. I never really thought there was anything physically wrong with the optic, I was more curious if anyone else had experienced the same thing. I would wager good money that if this had a P4F reticle instead, this thread wouldn't exist.
Man, I can't imagine what the H37 would be like in the 5-45x coming soon... Sensory overload, or perhaps so zoomed that the FOV is only 2 MILs.
