Leupold vs. Vortex.....

[338Shooter]

In before MoBoost suggests walmart rings.

 

[MoBoost]

In before MoBoost suggests walmart rings.

Wow, now ... Walmart's Weaver quad-lock are the best rings on the market!!!*









* for under ten dollah

 

[338Shooter]

Hahahahahahahahaha.

 

[doctorjj]

Optics have "light gathering" ability (proportional to the square of aperture, aka objective). Since in real time (aka looking through it) you loose light when passing through glass and brightness via magnification (square of "X"), technically rifles scopes don't "gather" light - they just do their best to "transmit" it.

So they have the ability to gather light but they don't gather light. Okay. Makes sense.
Not!
As you said, they gather light according to the size of the objective. The larger objective, the more light gathered. So, scopes do, indeed, gather light. Of course you can have a huge objective and crappy optics which don't transmit as much of the light gathered and therefore are unable to resolve as well as another scope with a smaller objective and better internals. Still though, both scopes gather light.

 

[MoBoost]

It is impossible for any scope to "gather" light. It can only transmit existing light. And, regardless of advertising claims you may have heard, there is no riflescope made that can transmit 100% of available light.

As light enters the objective end of the scope, before it reaches your eye it passes through several lenses. Each lens absorbs a small quantity of light. Residual reflection from the individual lenses will also prevent a certain amount of light from passing through the scope. In addition, undesired reflections within the metal tube can hinder the quality of the viewed image and the transmission of light.

Each lens has two surfaces. Thus, the total number of lenses within a scope (a variable-power scope can have between seven and ten) is multiplied by two, then multiplied by 0.25% to determine the amount of light lost in the transmission. Simple multiplication is not accurate, however, as each succeeding lens progressively reduces the total amount of transmitted light. It is a favorite technique of some scope manufacturers to claim light transmission values of nearly 100%. Of course, they're measuring the first objective lens only, conveniently forgetting about the other eight or nine!

Any higher transmission levels are physically impossible to achieve with current technology, and claims to the contrary are to be discounted. What does light transmission mean in practical terms? An average scope may transmit 85% or so, and inferior scopes substantially less. The human eye can distinguish transmission differences of 3% or more. Consequently, there is a very real difference in what you can see through a superior scope versus run-of-the-mill optics.

The very best rifle scopes human beings can create will transmit to your eye "under perfect conditions" a maximum of 94.5% to 95% of available light. There are but a handful of scope companies remaining that produce optics approaching these levels, Schmidt & Bender being one of them.

Under hunting conditions, when you might be trying to distinguish a target at absolute last light, these differences can be critical. It can determine whether you bag your game or whether you have long since called it a day.

Courtesy of http://www.schmidtbender.com/

 

[doctorjj]

Larger lenses gather more light.

Courtesy of Galileo.

 

[SgtMojo67]

SgtMojo67, what base and rings will you be choosing for your rifle?

It already has a Burris one piece base....not sure what brand the rings are......Came with a Swift Premier 4-12x50 scope also....

 

[ez bake]

Bore sighting takes 5 minutes and if it gets you on paper with one shot, the second shot should be zeroed if you can read the reticle.

Fair enough, but if you live where I do, the nearest place that can (competently) bore-sight is over half an hour away and at $.70/round, I can always get on-paper at 100yds with 3 shots or less at the range which is less than the gas-money I'd need to get to a place that bore-sights. Plus, if you're new to long-range shooting, you might not have as steady a hand to zero in one shot after bore-sighting - especially if you're just putting your rig together and it needs adjusting (LOP, Cheek-wield, etc.).

I suppose not everyone is in BFE like me though

 

[338Shooter]

You don't need a shooting range to bore sight either. Just a way to hold the gun steady while you look through the bore and scope and make the adjustments.

The rifle should be properly set up without ever having dropped the hammer on a live round.

 

[ez bake]

You don't need a shooting range to bore sight either. Just a way to hold the gun steady while you look through the bore and scope and make the adjustments.

The rifle should be properly set up without ever having dropped the hammer on a live round.

I guess I've never had an issue hitting the target at 50yds and then moving immediately to 100yds and zeroing on a newly installed scope. More often than not, I have zero issues hitting the paper at 100yds and just adjusting the reticle to my 3-shot group (I like to put 3 on paper before adjusting to make sure I'm not doing anything wrong before changing anything - but I'm still not the most disciplined shooter).