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Inexpensive, Excellent Spotting Scope

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#1 · (Edited)
The biggest problem with cheap spotting scopes is that they are, well.....cheap. Even if they look OK at low power, the image usually goes to crap quickly on higher magnifications, either by getting harder to focus or getting very dim.

By using some of my camera and optic knowledge, I arrived at getting one of the Celestron Maksutov Mak90 "spotting scopes". Celestron has been around for many years, and although this one is a low end made in China unit, it seems very solid. They make VERY high end stuff that is on their website.

Celestron 90mm Maksutov Spotting Scope Package - Scope w/Tripod 93606 FREE S&H 52268-OP. Celestron Mak Telescopes, Celestron Mak Spotting Scopes, Celestron Telescopes, Celestron Spotting Scopes.



OK, in reality it is a small astronomy telescope (I was looking at moon craters with it last week). But it has several advantages. The scope itself has no magnification. To change powers you change the eyepiece. The only moving optic part is the focus assembly. Because of this it is a very simple, and inexpensive design.

The 90mm lens makes it a VERY bright scope, and it is impressively clear. On the downside, all that glass makes it kind of heavy, which challenges the cheap tripod that comes with it. The backpack isn't too useful either. It's padded, but not enough to protect a scope like this. A trip to Fry's Electronics netted me a reasonably cheap cargo case ($60) that fits everything.

The 32x eyepiece is PLENTY to look at targets at 100 yards...the 100x is just crazy, but it needs to be steady to be useful. There are other power eyepieces that are reasonably cheap, but these seem to do it for me. I wanted to have mine rest on the bench, and got in one of my fabricating moods (See my brake rotor rest thread.) so I spent a few hours over the course of two days and built the ultimate table top scope mount.







 
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