Nikon Fieldscope 82 Prostaff 5 Angled Spotting Scope Body

I've always had a soft spot for Nikon sporting optics despite being a Canon slr man, typically they offer a view that suits my eye, so when I was looking for a scope for my girlfriend who will confess is prone to clumsiness in moments of excitement this new scope caught my eye. Better that this hits the deck than something like a Leica! We spent a lot of time testing a number of medium priced scopes and non left us wanting to part with the cash until frustrated I bought this untested.

I bought this scope body and all three prostaff eyepieces so I'll cover them all here.

Firstly the body, initially upon opening the box I was a bit disappointed, it's a whole plastic construction however picking the scope up I was reassured that actually it feels extremely solid. The built in sliding hood works well and doesn't feel cheap. The same can't be said for the stay on case which is extremely flimsy and doesn't cover either the eyepiece, focus wheel or the objective lens. Nikon do provide a decent lens cap so all is not lost. There are two tripod mounting threads, though unless you have a camera on a bracket attached to the back of the scope I can't see anyone using the rearmost one. Eyepieces are attached via a twist bayonet mechanism, this feels extremely well thought out, each eyepiece locating with a solid click with no wobble or fear that the environment might intrude into the inner workings.

Finally this is a large and heavy scope you will need something like a Scopepac in order to be able to carry this over any large distances on a tripod.

A scope lives and dies by it's eyepieces so here is my summary of the three dedicated prostaff ones.

20-60 Zoom

The performance of this eyepiece is a bit variable.

From 20-30x the eyepiece is impressive, it's bright, sharp and has a neutral colour cast with a little aberation at the edges that is hardly noticable. The image is very sharp with a little softening towards the edge but you really have to look for it. My brother who owns a Leica televid was blown away by the performance for the price at this level with the eyepiece zoomed out.

between 30-40x a slight yellow cast is introduced ( which your eye soon adapts to), the depth of focus is reduced, light starts to drop off and increased aberration is present, not in an annoying way but you do notice that it's not as sharp as the lower power settings.

between 40-50x aberration again takes a step up and light, depth of focus, sharpness and colour fidelity drop off but it remains perfectly usable.

between 50-60x I find the eyepiece unusable, aberration is high, the view dim and colours are muted. Depth of focus is very small with even minor movements of your quarry making you refocus. I prefer to zoom out a bit myself, that said my girlfriend is quite happy with the zoom at full power so perhaps I am over critical.

The eyepiece offers decent eye relief at the low and high end but annoyingly this changes as you zoom the eyepiece so it goes from great at 20x, to average at 40x and back out to great at 60x again. This can mean adjusting the rubber eyecup or leaving it wound in and just moving your head about.

The final annoyance is that focus doesn't remain in place as you zoom ( though this is normally only available to high end scopes to be fair) so you have to refocus once you've zoomed.

Next up the 25x's, this is the best eyepiece optically by far. It's slightly brighter and sharper than the zoom at an equivalent power setting and offers a very slight improvement in the field of view. Aberration is largely unnoticeable and again there is no colour cast that I could detect. Eye relief again is very good. If you don't need very high power then this would be my choice.

Finally the 38x's eyepiece, this is very poor, abberation is worse than the zoom at an equivalent power setting and the eye relief is also worse, keep your cash is my advice.

All in all this still remains a great first scope, even scopes around the 1k mark aren't free from some of the issues I've highlighted here, at low zoom or with the 25x's eyepiece you'll be left wondering why the bloke next to you in the hide spent another 2k on his Swaro......

If you don't need high powers of zoom or want something lighter and smaller to carry then also look at the Nikon ED50 with the 13-40 zoom eyepiece, I've not tested it but the ED lens should mean a great performance, thanks the the rather keen Warehouseexpress pricing there isn't much between the set ups.