Zak,
I'm one of those guys with MOA programmed on the brain, so maybe that's party responsible for my NF affinity (it's certainly a minus for S&B, whom, as far as I know, only use Mil-dot reticles). I'll be the first to admit I've had little experience with S&B, but I have been over to USO's factory in Buena Park, where I brought my NF NXS 3.5-15x for a head-to-head comparison. Granted, it was a rainy day, but I didn't see the difference that everyone else claims. The common problems I always find with rifle scopes, i.e. bad curvature of field at low magnification, noticable chromatic abberation at higher magnification, still plagued the USO scope (I wish somebody would build a rifle scope with apochromatic lenses).
As far as using the reticle for holding the wind, yes, I'll agree that's the only time I compensate with the reticle. But the truth is, 99% of the time I'm using my scope's maximum power when taking the shot; if I find that the highest power setting on my scope isn't the one I use most often, I buy a lower power scope.
used these thin-line scopes to engage targets from 300 on out at 4x and it is possible
Possible, yes. But ideal, I don't know. At low power settings, where one must place an emphasis on speed, it's a thicker reticle, not a thinner one that's needed. It has always seemed to me that 1st focal plane reticles are at their worst at both ends of the magnification range (unless, like you said, they are perfectly tuned for the high end, in which case I find them waaay to fine at low power).
On the point of ranging using the power ring.. how accurately can the current power be read? It'll have to be at least 5% to have a reasonable chance at hitting a 2 MOA target in the 600-yard regime.
I guess the real question is, which is easier to guesstimate, the actual power, or the actual angular target size. In my experience, bracketing the target with perfect integer number of tick-marks and extrapolating your magnification is usually more accurate than knowing your magnification and guessing how large the target actually is (e.g. somewhere between 6 and 8 MOA). Maybe I'd change my mind if I switched over from the NP-R2 to the finer NP-R1, but I think that the R1 reticle would be too cluttered on my 2.5-10 NXS, and I like using the exact same reticle on all of my scopes.
In the end, I doubt I'll ever see a scope that I think rises significantly above the performance of the NF NXS series, unless someone bothers to make a scope with an APO objective lens, zero stop elevation turret, 34mm tube, 56+mm objective, MOA-pattern (illuminated) reticle with MOA adjustment knobs, >4x power range, >100 MOA vertical travel, 2nd focal plane reticle. Hey, while we're at it, why not integrate a laser range finder which automatically compensates an electronic reticle for holdover, incorporating air temperature, bullet weight and muzzle velocity, as well as altitude into the ballistic trajectory.
BTW Zak, are you going to be at the MGM Ironman this year? If so, maybe I'll see you there and we can talk/compare optics. I'd love to see some NF vs. S&B side by side comparisons.
