Over the past weekend I studied four similarly powered scopes that I have on hand; the Zeiss Conquest 3-9X40, Nikon Monarch 3-9x40, Leupold 3-9X33 Ultralight, and Leupold VX-III 2.5-8X36. Lately, I've been downsizing a lot of things around here. Unnecessary size/weight is one of the items I've been looking at.
I picked these four scopes for a reason. My thought is that the Conquest is the best $400.00 scope out there. Also, the Nikon has always impressed me optically for the money. The two Leupolds are my attempt to decrease stature and weight on upcoming muzzleloaders. My thinking was to do a little informal test and compare the full-sized Conquest to the Leupold Ultralight and then see how the Nikon and VX-III stack up.
I started yesterday afternoon looking at birds, tree bark, people boating, reading, boat tags, etc. I was at Moms house and she lives on a lake! All the scopes were clear in bright light as could be. One on my favorite test is to read license plates(all boat docks must be registered on this lake) of the boat docks across the lake. The license plates are red with white numbers for a really good contrast. The distances are from 203 to 235yds per rangefinder.
Since the max magnification is 8X on the Leupold VX-III(yes I know it is actually 7.8X :shock: ), I set all the scope on 8X. Viewing the tags in good light was absolutely no issue at all. All the scopes were clear and bright in good light as they should be. Starting at 6PM however, I checked back every 20 minutes to see if I could still read the plates until 7:30 and then I just constanted checked. I had absolutely no problem at all until about 7:50PM. All the scopes started getting a little fuzzy. At 8PM, I could no longer distinctly make out the lettering on the plates with the Leupold Ultralight and the VX-III. At approx 8:05 the Nikon was too fuzzy and somewhere between 8:10-8:15PM the Conquest became too fuzzy.
What conclusions did I come to other than my eyes were tired? :shock:
1. The Conquest WAS the best scope I had, albeit not by much! :!:
2. For the money, the Nikon Monarch is VERY hard to beat!
3. The VX-III was really no better optically than the Ultralight which is advertised as using VX-II components.
4. The two Leupolds with smaller objectives held their own against the larger objective scopes.
5. I LIKE that Ultralight 3-9x33. Being 15% shorter and weighing 38% less than the Conquest it gave up VERY little in low light performance.
6. There isn't much optical difference at all between Leupolds VX-II and VX-III riflescopes.
I picked these four scopes for a reason. My thought is that the Conquest is the best $400.00 scope out there. Also, the Nikon has always impressed me optically for the money. The two Leupolds are my attempt to decrease stature and weight on upcoming muzzleloaders. My thinking was to do a little informal test and compare the full-sized Conquest to the Leupold Ultralight and then see how the Nikon and VX-III stack up.
I started yesterday afternoon looking at birds, tree bark, people boating, reading, boat tags, etc. I was at Moms house and she lives on a lake! All the scopes were clear in bright light as could be. One on my favorite test is to read license plates(all boat docks must be registered on this lake) of the boat docks across the lake. The license plates are red with white numbers for a really good contrast. The distances are from 203 to 235yds per rangefinder.
Since the max magnification is 8X on the Leupold VX-III(yes I know it is actually 7.8X :shock: ), I set all the scope on 8X. Viewing the tags in good light was absolutely no issue at all. All the scopes were clear and bright in good light as they should be. Starting at 6PM however, I checked back every 20 minutes to see if I could still read the plates until 7:30 and then I just constanted checked. I had absolutely no problem at all until about 7:50PM. All the scopes started getting a little fuzzy. At 8PM, I could no longer distinctly make out the lettering on the plates with the Leupold Ultralight and the VX-III. At approx 8:05 the Nikon was too fuzzy and somewhere between 8:10-8:15PM the Conquest became too fuzzy.
What conclusions did I come to other than my eyes were tired? :shock:
1. The Conquest WAS the best scope I had, albeit not by much! :!:
2. For the money, the Nikon Monarch is VERY hard to beat!
3. The VX-III was really no better optically than the Ultralight which is advertised as using VX-II components.
4. The two Leupolds with smaller objectives held their own against the larger objective scopes.
5. I LIKE that Ultralight 3-9x33. Being 15% shorter and weighing 38% less than the Conquest it gave up VERY little in low light performance.
6. There isn't much optical difference at all between Leupolds VX-II and VX-III riflescopes.
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