Its hard to decide which spotting scope we want,  we can decide on a rifle much eaiser.   leadball

I have a cheap $100.00 spotting scope and two other guys I shoot with have nicer and more costlier spotting scopes in the $350.00 to $400.00 range. We shoot one time a month at a range in Fayetteville NC. The sun doesn't touch the target while we are shooting. None of us can ever see our holes at 300 yds. Not when they are in the white nor while they are in the black. Is there a scope that will allow one to see 45 cal. holes at 300 yds.?

Dick Agree fixed will always resolve better than variables.

That Unertl 63x24 on Ebay reached about 625 dollars and closed with no sale as not making reserve.  Considering Kowas with eyepieces cost right much more than that it would have been a pretty good buy looked like new.

Of course it is no longer made and has no warranty etc. still to my mind is the perfect balance of size and ability.  Not to mention snob appeal.

Boats

I always wondered if there was not some way to put contrasting material behind the target. either right behind or perhaps some sort of reflector lighting up the back side and showing through.  That's a common method with photography outdoors. Along the lies of what Irish suggested you can get colored films intended for camera use to put in front of lens.  Some have nice holders but often times are  just taped on.

We talk a lot about scopes but I have walked down the line when light was adverse and looked through everybody else's scopes with the same result, when it shuts down it shuts the best down too.

Boats

You can have too much light behind the target backers.  Our range faces south (beggars cannot be too choosy).  At some times of year & day, the sun shines through the shot away parts of the backing and makes it difficult to differentiate between bullet holes and spots created by sunlight coming through the backing.

OTOH, at an early morning shoot and when spotting for someone else, you can sometimes see the bullets on their way to the target.

As a matter of interest I took my Swarovski 25-40x75 along to the 300 metre range on Sunday to see if I could see the 7.5 Swiss military round in the white, black, fawn and green targets that the Swiss use in their homeland at this range. 
The targets were well patched and I could not make out any bullet holes. 
Mind you when in the butts, scoring and patching you sometimes had to look twice to see the hit in the black.
With this scope I can see 22 bullet holes at two hundred metres. Bit of a job in the black and it all depends on the light.

With  no back up or data to support my opinion. 

I suspect there is a proper balance of objective lens size to power.  50mm's do best at 20 power Get too much power with limited objective lens size and you loose resolution.  My little fixed power Leopold compact 25 X spotter does not resolve as well as my shooting buddys 20x50 mm compact Leopold. Scopes are identical except power.

Kowas 77 or 82 mm are fine with a fixed 27 power eyepice  Have looked through them with higher power eyepieces and they are not as clear,  The big 100 MM Unertl team scopes we used on my Reserve rifle team had high power eyepieces but we used a 25 most of the time. I don't there there has ever been a scope with better resolution that that  one.

Coatings and better quality glass as well as rock solid mounts will move the balance figure some but as a rule too much power is not a good thing for resolution. Cheapest way to get resolution is a sturdy tripod.

Nero the best way to spot when rough sighting is put a Skeet orange clay pidgeon on the dirt berm, spot the dirt flying off strikes.  Much faster way to get close to correct sights than any other.  Make bold corrections too. Figure the miss in MOA and take the whole correction next shot. Often times one or two shots will zero very near correct. 

Boats

Mizura wrote on Mar 5^th, 2009 at 11:29am:

I have a pretty good tripod and a Freeland scope stand. There's constant wind here in FL. The scope in the tripod vibrates in the wind, even when everything is tightened up. The scope in the Freeland stand doesn't vibrate so much if the rod is rested against the bench side. 
Shorter stands bolted or clamped to the bench are better yet.
But, I have yet to find a stand that holds the scope still in the wind. I'd like to hear of and buy one. All my shooting from the bench.
joe b.