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A Most Important Feature

When looking for a telescopic lens for your firearm, there's no end to the options. Some people are really loyal to a certain brand name and others could care less about name, they shop price. Regardless of the motivation, you'll want to choose your optics to fit your shooting criteria. In this article we'll take a look at a very important feature to consider, especially if you're looking for a scope for a hand gun.

Extended Eye Relief, The Most Important Part Of Choosing A Scope For Your Handgun

The feature we're talking about is extended eye relief, which is the distance between your eye and the ocular lens of the scope when the full field of view is visible. Determining the proper EER is really important. The big question is how do you do it? Here's something you can do to experience both full field of view and extended eye relief.

When you are looking through your scope, move your head so the scope is at varying distances from your eye. You will notice a black ring or shadow in your site picture. When you find the place where the black ring or shadow is totally gone from the picture in the site, your target should fill the entire inside diameter of the eye piece and be completely centered in the scope. Once the target has filled the site you have full field of view and now you'll be able to measure the eye relief distance.

When using a handgun scope, this measurement is critical since you'll be holding the scope between five to 30 inches away from your eye. If the full field of view is improper at these distances, then you'll have to make physical adjustments to accommodate the scope. This affects your accuracy and besides, the idea is to have the scope working for you, not the other way around.

Magnification Affects Eye Relief

Eye relief changes with magnification, so the higher the magnification of the scope, the less eye relief you will have. With higher magnification, the field of view narrows and that sometimes makes it harder to acquire the target-especially if it's moving. There is a trade-off in the process. Even though there is less visual information to be processed, the target is magnified by whatever number of times you dialed in on the scope, so your target will be easier to see once it is in your field of view. Remember, a larger field of view will always allow for quicker target location.

You Have To Know The Magnification Numbers To Determine Exit Pupil

Knowing the magnification power of the scope is necessary in order to formulate the exit pupil diameter. The exit pupil of your scope should match the pupil size of your eye as closely as possible, or maybe just a little larger, to get maximum low light performance and to prevent scope blackout. Calculate the exit pupil diameter by dividing the objective lens diameters by the scope power. If the exit pupil of the scope is smaller than the diameter of your eye's pupil, you'll have trouble seeing the full image of your target.