I've recently been seeing lots of Pentax rifle scopes for sale, "Lightseekers" and "Gameseekers".
Any opinions on these scopes as far as clarity?
Durability?
Warranty?
They are made in Colorado right?

I looked through a couple of gameseekers and thought the lens quality was great for the price range. Good enough that I will be buying one soon for my muzzle loader from Doug at Cameraland NY,

quote:

Originally posted by Snellstrom:
They are made in Colorado right?

That's right, Taipei, Colorado.

They're pretty typical of generic Asian optics from camera companies: Optics are usually excellent (good glass is cheap these days). The problem is that the factors that are important in a camera are different from those important to an optical gun sight like eye relief, eye placement latitude, compactness, reticle adjustment, and a number of other things. Most of the scopes being sold under the name of camera companies come up lacking in one or another of these areas.

You've said most of it Stonecreek... Nikon has taken awhile to get things pretty much right in the requirements of a rifle scope... Recoil tends to be something that I've noticed as being overlooked initially... The eyebox in the Nikon scopes is pretty tight... Though there are Leupold bashers out there they do have a generous eyebox... I've noticed the high end Euros tend to be tighter then the Leupys but not in such a way as the Nikon scopes... It would be nice to see some of these "camera" companies talking with experienced shooters and hunters so they get off on the right foot to start with.. One thing for sure is that camera optics manufacturers do tend to KNOW the optical quality side of the coin...

Ken....

I have a friend that picked up two 4-16x50 LS30s from Doug for a smoking deal. To me, just holding and looking through one of them around his place it seemed to be pretty clear, but I'd have to shoot with it at descent ranges to give any sort of meritable report.

I've heard they use Burris tubes and internals so, I'm assuming the LS30 I looked at was built like a Burris Black Diamond with Pentax glass. If that's the case, they should be a heck of a scope.

Reloader