This is going to be a bit of a rant, so please forgive me. Normally, I'd do some sort of a political post during the weekend and I still might.
In the meantime, there are a couple of people who are pushing me to start doing "Dark Lord reacts videos" where I watch someone else's Youtube video on optics and fall into morbid depression right on camera because of the absolute lack of technical literacy permeating the internet.
While that would generate views, I am not convinced it is hugely productive from an educational standpoint. It is also disrespectful to whoever made the video because I am sure they did not set out to be full of shit. My rule, so far, has been simple. If someone specifically mentions me, I reserve the right to take them apart. Otherwise, I stay polite.
Yesterday, someone sent me a video of a gentleman talking about two LPVOs. The LPVOs in question were the ones used by the US military and the discussion of their comparative merit was surprisingly decent about 60% of the time and illiterate nonsense 40% of the time (roughly). By Youtube standards, that's an A+ effort.
There is a lot of stuff there that's silly because I do not think he bothered to figure out what the military was looking for when they selected those scopes (I happen to disagree with how the procurement was written or done; but they got what they asked for).
There is also one thing that is common with Youtube reviews that I wanted to spend a minute on it.
He kept on saying that a particular scope is "almost 1x" or "close to 1x". He was also trying to make his comparison based on one scope being closer to 1x than the other.
Whenever you see this type of a discussion in a Youtube video, take everything that person says about optics with a grain (or a bucket) of salt.
All modern LPVOs have adjustable eyepieces. For a normal human eye, they can be set below or above 1x magnification. If the scope is not exactly 1x when you set it on 1x magnification, that means you did not adjust the eyepiece correctly.
To add insult to injury, when they put a camera behind the scope and start pretending that they are playing Call of Duty, they usually do not bother to adjust the eyepiece to the camera, so the image will look somewhat screwy. Or they will leave the camera on auto settings, so that it latches onto random things it sees: sometimes the reticle, sometimes the target, sometimes a completely random thing within the FOV. At that point, all these brilliant thinkers will start making profound conclusions about focus, distortion and color balance of the riflescope. Sometimes they will get it right (even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while). Most of the time, it is useless nonsense entertainingly narrated.
Then, there is the matter of perspective. No, not your personal perspective on global warming and world piece. The perspective from where you are looking at the target.
Let's say you've got the eyepiece of the riflescope perfectly adjusted so it is truly 1x.
When you start doing CQB drills at very short distances, you will still see a difference between your left eye looking at the target directly and your right eye looking through the scope.
Your left eye is looking at the target from the perspective of where your eye is located. Your right is looking at the target from the perspective of where the riflescope objective is located. If you have a 10" long optic with 4" eye relief, that places the objective 14" further forward than where your eye is.
If you are shooting a little further out, that difference is in the noise. If your target is 25 yards away, that perspective shift is only noticeable if you are looking for it. That perspective shifts is about 1.5% of the distance and that's really not a lot. For most people, the natural difference between our eyes is more significant than that and the brain accommodates it seamlessly.
However, if you are shooting at something 5 yards away, that's 7.5% of the distance and it can be noticeable especially if you are sensitive to it. That is one of the reasons a brightly illuminated reticle helps. It dominates what your eye sees.
When you sit and stare (which is what Youtubers usually do), the difference is very easy to pick up. When you are transitioning between targets, if you have a well defined reticle, like the ultra bright dot in Vortex Razor Gen2/Gen3, you do not see it.
That is one of the reasons why to me, Razor Gen3 still has a an edge over the absolutely phenomenal PA PLxC on 1x. With the two PA PLxC scopes I have, the one with the Meters reticle is better on 1x than the one with the mrad reticle, because the Meters reticle is more prominent on 1x.
I am sure there are some exceptions, like people with very significant phoria, but for most of us, this slight perspective mismatch it is not really an issue.
Still, this is one of the reasons why something like the UH-1 is still going to be faster than LPVOs if you are counting milliseconds. The better trained you are the less of a difference you will see.
Whether sheer speed is a criterion we should be using is a different discussion altogether, but let's shelve that until next time.
In principle, you can overcome this perspective difference via, again, eyepiece adjustment. You can adjust it to be at perfect unity magnification at 5 yards. However, you will be off at longer distances which, to me, is a more pronounced effect.
I usually calibrate the eyepieces on my LPVOs at around 50 yards to be as close to unity magnification as possible and leave them there.
Not bad, but a little more width would help. The tripod is Field Optics Research's Dome Top Hunter 32.
Rather amazingly, the balance on this thing is just right as is.
