quote:

Originally posted by Stonecreek:
To the contrary!

European scopes tend to require very precise eye placement, both fore-and-aft and laterally. This limited eye placement is necessary in order to optimize field of view and in order to keep eye relief constant over the range of magnification in a variable.

Leupold's hunting scopes sacrifice both a bit of field of view and constancy of eye relief in order to make the "eye box", as you term it, much larger.

These are unavoidable optical trade-offs -- you can't have both long eye relief and the widest field of view. Similarly, you can't have a long/wide field of eye placement if you optimize field of view.

The larger "eye box" is not particularly important on target scopes or other optical gunsights that are used from a fixed position. However, the forgiving "eye box" is very important on hunting rifles which are used in a variety of positions, many of which place your eye in a somewhat awkward and different position than it might be if your rifle is held in a more conventinal stance.

Unless you are able to look through a European model scope actually mounted on a rifle to compare it, then always assume that the Leupold "eye box" will provide you significantly more eye placement latitude.

I had to bite my cheek to avoid laughing aloud at a "better than the Joneses" type of guy who insisted on ordering a new Zeiss to replace the old Leupold on his rifle from our local dealer. The dealer mounted it for him and handed him the rifle, for him to look out the store window through his new, expensive scope. He must have searched -- head high, head low, neck extended, neck retracted -- for about 15 seconds before finding anything but black in the sight picture.