BSA Tactical IR Got it yesterday
Has popup locking turrets…Great scope and not too pricey…Not cheap but a good value for the buck
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so how much did it cost?
mamcrackin, the opening credits of the Bond films “007” is supposed to be from the point of view of someone looking through a barrel of a gun. What you are seeing is the spiral pattern produced by the weapon’s rifling.
However, the lens protection system is kinda neat. It’s actually a very common mechanism in cameras and is called an “iris.” In a camera it is used to control the amount of light entering a lens, but a secondary effect that you should be aware of is also to control depth of field. Depth of field simply is control over the angled rays coming in through the periphery of the lens. Light hits all parts of the lens; the center part of the lens is supposed to pass the light through straight, without altering its course; and as you get progressively farther out to the edge, it bends the rays more and more. Effectively, what happens is your image at the ocular end shows “depth” because everything at one set distance will be in focus, whereas everything closer or farther away will be out of focus. This out of focus characteristic was coined “bokeh” by the Japanese and the name stuck. For us shooters, we don’t want bokeh because our goal is to hit something so we need it to be in focus as much as possible. This is where your OBJECTIVE iris may help you. Note you have TWO iris, the one in front (objective) and the one in back (ocular). If you close the iris in front, yes, it will make the image darker as not as much light comes in… but you will frequently (it happens in most camera lenses of good quality) observe a sharpening of the existing image… and the bokeh is radically reduced, so everything on the periphery which was formerly out of focus will sharpen up a LOT. This is probably only do-able in daytime, of course. Your focus knob, if you have one, will be less and less useful. I can see the headlines on Talon.com now: “walt tells people to shoot with their eyes closed… what a moron” …the depth of field for most good lenses approaches a maximum near F8. I have no idea what f number your scope is; but each time you go one f stop higher, the amount of light entering the lens gets cut in half. Images tend to sharpen up until f8, and then fall off on the other side… so as you make the iris progressively smaller, it will sharpen images to a point and then start to
be less sharp. But on the far side (with the iris too small) the degradation is not noticeable. Besides, you won’t be able to see with the hole that small 🙂 What I have noticed, in real use, is that one of my night vision scopes that I just sold used to utilize C mount lenses, which were originally developed for the 8mm and then Super 8 cameras… these are the old movie cameras you don’t see anymore that used film emulsions. The lenses are easy to find on ebay and other places and C mount lenses have iris light control as well, so in experimenting with my night vision I found exactly the same thing… with night vision it is hard to focus sometimes because when you focus the lens on something you are watching at 20 yards in the dark, everything near you, like your loading gate on your gun, your breech, your pockets; everything is super blurry to the point that you can’t even see them; so if you want to check your gun you have to do it by feel unless you want to re-focus your night vision scope (I have it attached to a helmet that I wear) and then focus back again after… too tiresome. And forget trying to walk around in the bush like that. But I loved this particular scope because what I’d do was close down the iris slightly, and EVERYTHING would be in focus; from near to far; even my PVS-14a, which as an f1.2 objective lens, can’t do that. My C mount lens was f1.4, so not quite as efficient, but still, because of the ability to control depth of field, I considered it superior. I sold it, sadly, because I had too many toys lying around.
I have no idea how much you can use this feature, as I’ve never seen it on a rifle scope. But you may wish to give it a try and report back, I’m kinda curious as all my knowledge of the subject is from studying photography in the past 10 years due to having kids and wanting to take their pictures myself. Cool subject, but I’m by no means an expert.
aloha,
walt
I put wooden stakes out at 20, 30, 40, 50, & 60 yards and the side focus (parallax wheel) seems to be right on…So if you turn the wheel until you have the target focused, it will be really close to what is on the wheel….It’s a great tool…Glad to help Pete..
Hey Jeff,
Thanks im no expert either but I have a decent sized yard that I can shoot various targets at different ranges and thought it would be cool to mess around with side focus and actually use the elevation turrets instead of estimating with the mill dots. My current scope will hold a zero but is kinda inconsistant.10 clicks up today may or may not be 10 clicks tomorrow!! Thanks again
Pete
I was really thinking about get that scope. Thanks for posting it 😀
Pete, I am not a scope expert but, it focuses great at 10 yds, maybe even a little less. At full magnification everything is clear and in focus. The clicks on the turrets are sharp and the pull up and push down features to lock and unlock the turrets are great….I really like the parallax wheel compared to having to twist a ring on the objective. It is quick and convenient..I haven’t had the need to use the illuminated reticle yet but it is plenty adjustable for brightness and is really crisp and clear in low light. I have not had to adjusted it since I zeroed it…I am absolutely satisfied and can’t think of anything I would rather have….The only 2 things I didn’t like was the turrets don’t have reference marks under the cap so you can see how many clicks you have turned and that it was hard to find a place that had it in stock….I got it from http://www.OpticsPlanet.com Sku# BA-RS-STS416X44IR
I would call them first to make sure you don’t get backordered….They may have to call their distributor to see if it is ready to ship, so if they say they don’t have one ask them to check…..
I don’t think you would be disappointed.
Jeff
I was looking at these. I generally dont like BSA scopes but i was thinking if these had decent glass,focused down to 10yds and were consistantly repeatable they would be a pretty good deal. It would be a good fit for my SS. The website was a little vague. Have you used it much? how about a review after you play with it a bit.
Thanks,
Pete
Yea..It does close all the way..just left it open so you could better see what I was describing…I have never seen a scope with this on it….In the opening credits of the 007 movies they show this protective lens open and close in animation..I never knew what that was until I got this scope
That lens protection system is pretty cool. Does it close all the way up?
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Wow Walt…While there is NOT an adjustment ring directly on the objective lense, I do have a Parallax wheel/knob directly across from the windage adjustment that I use to focus on targets at different yardages…It also gives me an approximate idea how far away the target is……..I focused the Parallax on a target approx. 220 yds away with the iris wide open, and slowly started to close the iris. At one point the target got crystal clear..Seamingly a little darker but clear. That is amazing. I checked to see what would happen if I went passed the point where the target becomes clear and found that the smallest adjustment passed that point caused the light to be too low, and while the target was still clear the lack of light made it difficult to make out the details of the target….Thanks for pointing that out Walt. And yes, now that I think about it, I realize, you are right about the James Bond down the barrel view….It was a pistol right? I’ve got nothing to do all day..Any other field tests would be greatly appreciated….lol