Has anyone tried the Vortex Razor HD LER 23x eye piece?

[RDavies]

I have been using my Vortex Razor 85HD spotter which is great for picking up bullet holes and for general viewing. I am interested though in trying their 23x Long Eye Relief eye piece for spotting while prone and for scoring. Has anyone tried this eye piece? If so, is it forgiving of eye placement, decent field of view, I would like to know before I spend the money on one.

[pjifl]

Very often manufacturers have strange ideas of what is 'long eyerelief'.
Beware especially if the eyepiece is advertised as extremely wide field as well as super long eyerelief.

Reputable makers do achieve something sensible for a lot of moneyh and the item will be huge physically but some make an item such that one must be compromised for the other by the user.
I know of a seller who advertised the eyerelief as given by the scope maker and it was quite wrong. Not the sellers fault at all.

It would be worth getting someone to measure it.

Just place a piece of tracing paper behind the eyepiece.

Move it back and forth until you see a distinct well focused disk. Best if the scope is pointed at something bright like a bright sky (not sun).

Spectacle users will hardly ever be able to utilize wide field unless the eyerelief is well over 20 mm.
Used prone, with glasses, some of the precious eyerelief is used up by a the slope of the spectacles.

Some others are advertised an super wide field yet have an eye relief of no more than 14 mm which is little more than a scam because spectacle users will only see 1/2 the field.
A measurement will easily pick this up.


I am not trying to criticize the Vortex eyepiece and would not know about it..


Peter Smith

[RDavies]

You could be right Pete, one of the reasons I want to hear from someone else.
My 14mm Pentax XW is advertised as 20mm eye relief, which seems pretty accurate (still hard to use with glasses) , while the Vortex is advertised as 31mm, I just hope it doesn't have a very narrow field of view.

[Seddo]

I have a Vortex Razor HD Spotter and both the original and 30x Ranging Eyepiece dont work that well with glasses, i generally take them off. The web lists them as 18mm eye relief but the LER is only 31mm. To me 31mm is not LER.

[RDavies]

I have a Vortex Razor HD Spotter and both the original and 30x Ranging Eyepiece dont work that well with glasses, i generally take them off. The web lists them as 18mm eye relief but the LER is only 31mm. To me 31mm is not LER.

My current eye piece has around 20mm, which is OK with no glasses, I am hoping that if the eye relief is a true 31mm with the LER version, then it will be "good enough" even if it is not a true long eye relief. More importantly, I hope it is very forgiving of eye position.

[pjifl]

Shooters seem to have a different idea of 'long eyerelief' from others.

A rifltescope usually has 80 - 100 mm eyerelief. But it is a freak of a device and in fact its apparent field of view is quite small and never can be extreme because the eye lens would need to be 4 inches across and weigh about 5 kg alone.

To all other users, long eyerelief is about 20 mm.
A few optical instruments were made with about 25 mm. because the Miltitary forced the issue.

Even 30 mm will be freakish and very uncommon.

If you want more than 30mm , I suspect the only sensible option is the combination I mentioned in another thread. It is cheap but only moderate field but does have that extra eyerelief.

Peter Smith

[aaronraad]

Not likely to see much technical development now either in terms of eye relief for spotting scopes.

Everyone is focused (excuse the pun) on making adaptors for you camera, smartphone, iPod if they haven't already got a digital image model already. There is also an obviously large military drive for this to allow remote (protected) user viewing.

Are there any rules on a digital spotting scope technology (not rifle scope) especially for F-Class shooting?

If not, I guess you could plug it into any portable display device that doesn't have wi-fi or bluetooth technology capability...maybe a DVD type player you chuck the kids in the back seat of the car...7" to 12" of condition watching glory...during dry conditions.

Just need the electronic target developers to include an extra common video input and put their display into a switching mode from target to camera. Skip that just get them to add a wide view digital camera, top mounted and integrated into the display unit that is shooter adjustable for pan/tilt/focus by the shooter. Oh don't forget a front facing camera as well for the obligatory shooter selfie with a facebook/twitter/PinIt upload link (whoops just went past the wi-fi/bluetooth rule)!