Hi Tweeters!

I am also in the market for a good scope.

What about long eye-relief with zoom scopes? Several scopes that I have
tried do not seem to have sufficient eye relief even at lower
magnifications: I find that I have to remove my glasses, fiddle with the
focus while being "semi-blind" and then fiddle with the zoom - very
annoying! Kowa makes a long eye relief fixed focal length lens (25X, I
believe) but what about scopes with higher magnification zoom lens such as
the Swarovsky ST-80?

Also, I have read that scopes such as the Kowa TSN-3/4 with flourite-coated
lenses provide no measurable performance (brightness, color) improvement
over similar scopes (ie TSN-1/2) without the flourite coating when viewing
at magnifications under 40X. Conversely, it seems that if you want good
performance at higher magnifications you need the flourite coated lens.
Perhaps this is why many birders with zoom TSN 1's & 2's seem to use only
the lower magnification ranges.

Vic Smith
Richmond BC
vmsmith at unixg.ubc.ca