Hello all,
As promised, I report back with a little more information after more test with the STC scope.
Test was done again under a medium overcast that seems to be the norm last days in my region, but without a drop of the highly needed rain by here. This time I went to a wetland not so far away from home. It still has some water, as opposed to other wetlands nearby. Tons of birds to watch, as they are grouping where water is.
This time I didn't took any other scope with me to compare.
Image Quality: It is excellent, with total absence of chromatic aberrations in those conditions. I love its wide field of view throughout all its magnificacion range. However, going up to 40 times makes the scope to struggle a bit, with a quite narrow depth of field and diminished light. Excellent with less magnification.
Hand holding: Again, very good in this regard. It is quite usable at 17x without any kind of rest, just standing, and it can be used even with a little more magnification. For the shake of testing, I used it without a tripod in a hide, resting it on my backpack, and it is pretty usable at 40x. Of course, using a tripod is quite more confortable, but I have bought this scope for my hiking walks, where sometimes the bird is too far away to id with my binoculars, so having the possibility to use more magnification resting on a rock or leaning into a tree, and avoiding the extra weigh of a tripod is quite nice.
Tripod use: This is a mixed bag for me. Being straight makes aiming easier than with an angled scope. This is even more evident when hand holding. Nevertheless, use confort is quite worse in my opinion compared to an angle scope on a tripod. I pair this scope with a Peak Design carbon travel tripod that I like a lot. I'm not tall (1,75m or about 5'9"), but being a straight scope it needs to be set at eyes height and that tripod falls 7cm or 3" sort. It is quite un-confortable to use. I have to find a way raise it a little, maybe changing the ball head with a light video head will suffice.
My conclusions so far:
- Very good scope to be used on hiking trips where weight has to be kept low, as it can be used without a tripod. No that I want to use it for long periods that way, but useful to ID that ocasional bird.
- Not as comfy to use on a tripod as an angled scope. I think that when I come up with something to raise the height of the tripod it will be better, but in my opinion it won't match the confort of an angled scope for this purpose.
- Would I have it if I could have only one scope? Sure not. For me this is a quite specific scope for specific uses. Maybe the ATC will be more versatile, sacrificing some easiness of use hand holding, both at aiming and keeping it steady. Anyhow I think that a 60+ or even 80+ good quality scope would be my choice if I could have just one.
Regards,
Antonio.