It’s a lame game to pull the “quantify it” when you’re effectively asking to quantify the number of elephants that fit on a purple.
But I offered some input to that specific question - comparing $1400 (ish) scopes to $3500 (ish) scopes, and will offer more here. The unfortunate part here, sitting with exactly the items within my reach about which you are THEORIZING, is that you’re simply too stubborn to listen. But for those others playing the home game…
Here’s an example of what happens in a $1400 scope, relatively commonly, which doesn’t in a $3500 scope - this is a very good scope, was around $1700 street when it was new in production and the Gen 3 version is $1500 currently. This scope has better clarity with less issues than most optics on the market, and we do have to zoom pretty hard and be pretty scrutinizing to notice, but zoom in and note the slight purple chromatic aberration boiling in the mirage flare along the dry grass line below the targets, the slight purple aberration mottled into the trees, and the slight lensing haze at the edges. Now, this was a pretty rough lighting day, and I’m slammed on the ground and shooting over a crown, on a bright day, and shooting ~20-30 degrees towards the sun, so the opportunity for glare is actually nicely avoided here, but there are still some notable issues in the image.
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Here are a couple shots from a $1900 MSRP 20-60x80mm spotting scope, right around 20x. Check out the tree at the bottom of the first image - mottled and discoloured by CA, and check out the consistent edge clarity lag and the chromatic aberration around the white letters on the truck in the second photo.
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Compare those against the mirage riddled photos shot through my $2700 binos in my previous post. The differences in clarity, color truth, image definition, edge clarity, etc are all obvious.
I was like you in my past. I’d never looked through truly elite level glass until maybe 10yrs ago, hell, I used to think Leupold 40x Competition optics were cream of the crop optics for a long time, and I thumped my chest about my Vari-X III’s. But one day I looked through a Nightforce BR scope, and then Schmidt & Bender, and NF ATACR’s, and Tangent Theta, and Kahles, and Zero Compromise, and Swaro… not just in a store or at a 100yrd range on that nice afternoon you decided to go shoot, but on a soupy, snotty day of mirage, and on hazy mornings where fog and rainfall cast everything grey, and on ridiculously bright afternoons in cattle pastures where EVERYTHING is the color of dead grass and burning sunlight into your eyes as if you’re looking directly into the sun, and snowy days where snow casts blue and purple all over the world…
The difference is there. It’s visible, and it’s tangible in performance at matches.
I’ll spend somewhere around $7000-10,000 on PRS competition, travel, and ammo this season. Even if I pretend a 5yr total depreciation schedule applies to riflescopes, there’s only $400/season difference in my investment between $1400 scope and a $3500 scope, less than 5% of my total cost this year, and really, that scope isn’t going to be $0 value in 5 years… let’s say I pick up ONE impact per match this season , that’s ~$20-30/point, and I’d pay that price any day of the week and twice on Sunday at most matches. And in MOST cases, the stage or match where you need that clarity, you need it a lot more than just one point (note that coyote target in my previous post… that was the average target size and target distance for that match! And I could see it, and the other targets, better than most of my competition that day).
Not everyone needs nor should everyone buy top of the line optics. But it’s pretty arrogant of you to continue poking and insulting as if the money spent is wasted simply because you can’t justify the expenditure for yourself. I don’t even live that way myself - I have a Bushnell Banner on one rifle and a Kahles K525i on another. My 9yr old son has a $49 (industry pro discount) Bushnell Trophy on one of his rifles, and an $1800 Bushnell DMR II Pro on another. I have a $3600 Nightforce ATACR 7-35x coming (hopefully shipping this week) from NF to go on my 2 mile rifle, but I have a $120 clearance Nikon Buckmaster on my crow rifle… I have a Leupold VX3i sitting on my wife’s Savage 12, a Burris XTR II on a 10/22 Charger pistol, and a handful of SigSauer Tango4’s and a couple of Bushnell Elite 3200, 4200, and 6500’s on my hunting rifles… I have a few pairs of boots which would have been $700-900 if I’d have had to pay for them, and I have a $50 pair of Under Armour running shoes that feel like cardboard - both shoes do the jobs I bought them to do… but one is obviously better quality than the other…
I’m damned sure not going to pretend all of these scopes are as just as good as one another just because I don’t want to pay $3600 for a Vortex Razor Gen III or another Kahles, or don’t wanna pay $4500 for a Tangent Theta…