Element Immersive 5x30 Prismatic
Since the good folks at Element Optics finally announced it at IWA, I can talk about it a little.
Here is their Instagram post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CpR6W0Gt1hd/
They have a whole line of prismatics coming up. I was only involved with the 5x30.
Now, I have not seen the final production model yet with the final reticle version and the final mounting configuration and all that. I have, however, spent a significant amount of time with the scopes that were finalized optically.
When Element releases the final specs and price we can talk about that, but here are some general impressions for now.
Optically, these are really good. This is one of the best eyepieces I have seen on a modern prismatics. These are fairly large prism assemblies with long eye relief, so they are not ultralights. The field of view is very wide, but not as wide as similarly sized scopes with shorter eye relief. There is an inverse relationship between eye relief and FOV.
Eyepiece is adjustable. They also have sidefocus, so you can get the image dialed in for longer distances or for shorter distances (dry practice, etc).
Did I already mention that they did a good job with the image? I may have. I like how they did the eyepieces. These are easy scopes to get behind. Distortion is very well controlled. Image quality is very good.
Push button illumination is integrated into the side focus knob.
There are two reticle or now, both with a sparse tree: mrad reticle and 5.56 BDC. It will be very interesting to see how they do. I added some wind (5mph and 10mph) and lead (5 mph) holds into the BDC reticle, but doing that in a comparatively low magnification scope can be challenging. It was an interesting problem to work through. When I had the prototype scopes here, I had no problem shooting plates out to 800 yards, but the BDC reticle is really intended for 600 yards and in. I'll go over that in more detail when the production scopes get here, so that I can do a "through the scope" video.
The turrets seemed to track pretty well, but they are covered. I designed the reticles to be self-sufficient. Still, if you know how to use a ballistic calculator, you can figure out how to use the turrets together with the reticle (or I can help you if it comes to that).
The mount will have an accommodation for a couple of different ways to set up a red dot, so that this can be a 1x/5x set up for an AR with really well optimized 5x.
The tube in front of the turrets is 34mm. While the scope comes with a mount that will work well on ARs and similarly configured guns, you can set it up with any 34mm rings on a gun that would be better served with a lower mount. I did a lot of my testing in that exact way on a conventionally stocked rimfire: just used to 34mm rings on the front tube and it styed zeroed.
Because you can do that, this may very well be an interesting solution for people who simply want a modern high quality fixed power scope on their boltguns, but that is an application to be explored later. The mount it comes with has a couple of pretty clever features.
Once production scopes get here, I'll do a proper work up and keep you updated.
