Brendan et al. --

I recently investigated the scope market and ended up buying the Pentax. With the zoom eyepiece, I could not detect any difference in resolution between it and the much more expensive Swarovskis, and the Pentax seemed to me to have better color fidelity. With the fixed-magnification eyepieces, I think the Pentax is optically superior to all other scopes on the market. The Pentax has by far the smoothest focusing mechanism of any scope on the market (reminiscent of Nikon LX roof prisms), which was an important consideration for me. It is admittedly a large scope (especially the massive zoom eyepiece!), but not so much to be a consideration unless you do a lot of walking in the field or expect to be packing it frequently for hard-core international travel. All the above just my opinion, of course. No way should you be dropping a grand on this, though. If you keep an eye on Ebay, you'll see them for as little as $700, including the zoom eyepiece. Currently both straight and angled models are available from a reliable seller on Ebay for $799.89, with zoom and no sales tax. Just do a search on "Pentax PF-80ED".

Best,

Bob Russell
Snohomish, WA


>-----Original Message-----
>From: TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu
>[mailto:TWEETERS-owner at u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Brendan McGarry
>Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 9:03 PM
>To: Tweeters
>Subject: Pentax Spotting Scope?
>
>
>Hey Tweets,
> I am wondering if anybody out there own an 80mm
>Pentax spotting scope. I have been doing a lot of research on scopes
>lately and I believe this is the scope I want, but I also haven't really
>been able to look through one. Even if anybody could tell me if they
>would reccomend my investment or not. They are about 1000 dollars which
>is what I want to spend and it has all the features and from reviews is
>a very good scope. Still 1000 dollars is a big investment and I don't
>want to just buy the scope based on a web sites reccomendation. Any
>help would be really appreciated.
> -Brendan
>
>Brendan McGarry
>Seattle, Washington
>Pica_pica417 at hotmail.com
>
>