Leupold vs. Weaver?

[atomicbrh]

My son Joel was shooting Target Air Rifle at a resettable bank of Chickens(the most distance that we can achieve is 20 yards) in the backyard Monday afternoon. The scope on his Air Rifle is a Leupold EFR that always stays on 20X. He was standing inside the front of the shop facing East. This means he had 30 feet of fluorescent light, 15 feet of bright sunshine with the sun behind him and about 15 feet of shade from another building in front of the chickens with the chickens in that same shade. Optical quality was good through the Leupold. I mean image quality was not even something he was thinking about. Joel and I could see the targets very clearly.

When finished with the Air Rifle, Joel picks up the Smallbore Rifle with a Weaver T24 to dry fire on the Chickens before putting the Chickens up. The Weaver T24 image was a yellow haze making it very difficult to see the chickens clearly. I did not have time to get out another Weaver T24 to see if the yellow haze was common to another Weaver T24 under these conditions. I do not know alot about optics and cannot explain what was going on. I know that shootoffs are usually under lower light conditions later in the day with targets sometimes in shadows so this may be worth doing some research. This is our first Leupold scope. I do not think anything was wrong with that particular Weaver T24. The only thing that I can guess is that the lens coatings are different on the two scopes. Are the lens coatings on a Leupold that much better than a Weaver? Does anyone have any ideas about what was going on during these light conditions?

Thanks,
Bobby R. Huddleston

[BlauBear]

Are the lens coatings on a Leupold that much better than a Weaver?

Yes.

Does anyone have any ideas about what was going on during these light conditions?

Thanks,
Bobby R. Huddleston

No.

Long course, Leupold glass is better than Weaver, and there is a yellow shade involved, but I don't know optics well enough to say what makes the difference. But be fair - a Leupold FXIII-25x40 costs $600 while a Weaver T-24 costs what - $400? Although I have Leupold's the lower cost of the Weaver T-24 has sure tempted me.

[Jason]

I'd have to partially disagree there. The Weaver T24s that I have now have better (more resolution, better color) glass than the 6.5-20 EFR Leupold scope that I had, but not as good as the new FXIII 30X Leupold scope that I had. So no, the Leupold scope coatings/glass aren't always better than Weaver. It depends on the year/model. Yes, the different coatings can react differently under the same conditions, but it isn't clear that they were under the same conditions in your example. If there was a difference in what angle the light was hitting either lens of the scope (due to rifle it was mounted on, how much the scope body covers the lens, whether or not it had a sunshade on it, etc.), then it's hard to compare directly. Down at the Tacoma matches, we face the east so commonly have morning sun glaring in the scopes during the summer. On the match that I forgot my sunshade on my Sightron SII 24X scope and another shooter had his Leupold 6.5-20X shadeless, his did indeed seem to handle the direct sun hitting the objective lens better than mine. Mine had quite a bit more glare that made shooting the rams in the shade harder. Of course, even his Leupold was nowhere as good as even a BSA that was owned by someone who had the forethought to bring a sunshade in that situation.

[GeoNLR]

Ok, I'll take a stab at this. Not to say that my opinion is any better than anyone else's, just that it' my opinion.

Weaver T-24 scopes.

100% fact that the glass varied greatly in quality. Especially in the beginning of the line. I had customers than would request that I go through the t-24's in stock and "Send me the best one you have". Many of the early T-24's were "cloudy" to look through and a little gray.

But here is the deal, the scopes were $375! What you were paying for is the fact that they return to zero / track a grid. If not 100% of the time, damn close. They never claimed to have similar coating on the T-series optics that they do on their hunting lines such as the Grand Slam, etc. where the coating / performance rivaled that of the VX-III scopes.

Leupold VX-III Scopes

Have never seen nor heard of variations in quality of glass. If you have one that is not identical to any vx-iii glass you have seen, I would send it back to Leupold and demand they change it out. Leupold has specifications on performance of their glass on the different lines (light transmission / power of resolution/ etc.), the vx-iii line being near their top. So if you have one that you can see any type of 'flaw' or lack luster performance, I would imagine they will have no issue taking care of the problem for you.

You are paying for the glass w/ a Leupold, I would hold them to it if you are not 100% happy with at least that.

Tracking - when Leupold switched from the Vari-x to the VX line, for some reason there seemed to be some REAL issues with QC in my opinion. I had (2) scopes that were basically DOA (one the reticle fell out, the other sounded like I was crushing glass while adjusting the AO). I have not had / nor heard of any continuation of these issues.

A/O - I have generally accepted the fact that the A.O settings are not 100% repeatable on Leupie's EFR scopes. I had finally settled for marking each animal on the scope with a 'tick' from a pencil for that particular day / range conditions. Why this is, I have no clue, but I don't see this with the FX-30 that I am shooting with now.


Bushnell - (B&L) Elite - Now if you want to talk about coating and performance, you would want to look through the B&L 4200 series scopes. Rainguard is the real deal and I really enjoyed shooting these scopes. I wish they had 1/4 MOA adjustments and didn't weigh the same as a large boat anchor! The A/O is un-real. Air rifle field target guys use the B&L scopes from their ability to range find accurately with the A/O on these scopes. 3-4 yards make a difference to an air rifle out at 30+ yards.


Anyway Bobby, I am not surprised at your assessment of the differences between the 2 scopes, that would be consistent with what I have seen between the 2 lines.

[kevinpagano]

I agree with chicken. I had a Bush 4200 and loved the scope except for 2 things weight and 1/8 clicks. I recently looked through one again for the first time in a long time. I was very impressed.