Roy I recently went through th trauma of scope buying,after much soul searching and internet hopping I decided that as i was only going to buy one scope ,so considering the wealth of advice available on the net and this forum I plumed for the swarovski ats 80 with 20X60 about a grand with a good carbon tripod brand new,it,s not the Hd model as I couldn,t justify the exrta £500 you have to pay(one dark dreay day I may regret that) but up to now it,s changed my birding and the piece of mind you get with the 30 year gaurentee is comforting.Have a look round next time you go on a 'twitch' swarovskis abound,i,ve made a few sacrifices to stretch my budjet but i,m glad I did plump for new.


cheers geoff havn,t had a shop made butty in six months

Roy Ganley wrote:

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After looking at the price of the lens and the scope & tri pod on google etc the retail is around £980 .

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Prices vary wildly Roy, from shop to shop like you wouldn't believe but as said before that whole set up bar one eyepeice is available on line for £599, brand new! Consider it when you're thinking about whether the price offered to you for these items is a good one or not.

Of course you're right Tim, there are many superb 2nd hand bargains out there but they don't come along very often so have to be jumped on immediately.

Nikon do the superb ED50 telescope which with eyepeice only comes to just over £400 brand new, sure it's only a 50mm objective lens but the scope is tiny, soooo light and Nikon undoubtably make some (if not THE?) best optics so the image is simply superb. There is (on an altogether inferior forum ) an Opticron 66GA scope (non ED) with zoom lens, case and jessops tripod (crap!) for £200 pounds and Roy, if you're still interested in that scope you've been offered I'd use this price as a bartering tool.

A look at current scopes on the market finds the entirely brand new Leica APO 88 at a frankly staggering £2500 currently and the smaller 65mm version at £2000!

Not even 12 months interest free credit makes that appealing I'm afraid

After looking at the price of the lens and the scope & tri pod on google etc the retail is around £980 . I am thinking due to the current climate it might be best to stick with these and later upgrade as I blew all my budget on a pair of Zeiss 7x42 Victory last month and only decided on a scope when a nice chap at Martin Mere showed me the Marsh Harrier with his scope as it was just a brown blob on a fence post with the bins .

I was comparing a secondhand Leica with Opticron - mine was secondhand when I bought it and I compared it in the shop (not In Focus) to a new Opticron at about the same price at the time about 4 or 5 years ago and opted for seondhand. My mate's APO Leica kit he traded up for was also secondhand and he didn't have to add much to get it. If it's not damaged then it can really be just as good as new. Obviously it's all down to your budget. I was just making the point to shop around and consider all the options including secondhand deals you can test out. It's all a matter of budget and taste. There's so much out there...

Tim Wilcox wrote:

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Sounds like a moderate deal if new - definitely not if secondhand. Opticron make very nice gear at the lower and mid-end - I've now got a Mighty Midget for travelling and long walking (amazingly light and reasonable image for the price) and have had another 60mm one (my first) that was under £200 with zoom lens and case - I can't remember the model number now. However a friend bought similar kit to the GS665 GA and traded it all in for a Leica 65 APO with zoom and wide angle lenses only months later. Don't dive in - take the opportunity to compare and contrast - I recommend having a tinker at the In Focus shop at Martin Mere where you can line up some trial scopes and actually point them at some birds instead of at the buses in a city centre. V. helpful service there too. You may even find the non-APO 65mm Leica I recently traded in there which could be nice deal. The APO is the business but the non-APO served me well for several years. It's fringing was only really noticeable when I tried to digiscope. Huge long eye-relief lenses on Leica's too which can be very important for e.g. sea-watching. You can also try the amazing Kowa Prominar there too and then consider taking a big gulp, waving your credit card at it and dealing with the consequences later!

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Where in lies your problem Roy, one man's opinion is completely different to the other! So as I said originally, your first port of call should be field testing.

That said, your own budget should be second, sure it would be nice to get the new Kowa as Tim mentions but at over £1500 pounds? I have a Swarovski ATS 80, £1500 worth itself. Am I happy with it? Of course, yes! Would I have spent that sort of money on it without being fortunate (or is that skillfull ) enough to win the Alula mystery bird competition and a pair of Leica bins which I sold to raise 70% of the scope's value? Probably not. The fact is that the very best optics WILL enhance your hobby, there's no doubt of that but you have to work out if you can afford them. To compare the Leica APO to the Opticron is unfair as one is double the price of the other, it's a bit like comparing your current car (mine's crap!) to a very top of the range Benz or BMW, yeah, we'd all like one but can we afford it, will we get our use out of it, are we capable of getting the best out of it, wil something smaller and cheaper suffice without making too much different from our day to day use? Apply those questions to a scope and see where that gets you.

That said, an interest free option for 12 months on a top of the range scope is hard to resist, sure you'll have to pay for it sooner or later but a lot can happen in 12 months

Sounds like a moderate deal if new - definitely not if secondhand. Opticron make very nice gear at the lower and mid-end - I've now got a Mighty Midget for travelling and long walking (amazingly light and reasonable image for the price) and have had another 60mm one (my first) that was under £200 with zoom lens and case - I can't remember the model number now. However a friend bought similar kit to the GS665 GA and traded it all in for a Leica 65 APO with zoom and wide angle lenses only months later. Don't dive in - take the opportunity to compare and contrast - I recommend having a tinker at the In Focus shop at Martin Mere where you can line up some trial scopes and actually point them at some birds instead of at the buses in a city centre. V. helpful service there too. You may even find the non-APO 65mm Leica I recently traded in there which could be nice deal. The APO is the business but the non-APO served me well for several years. It's fringing was only really noticeable when I tried to digiscope. Huge long eye-relief lenses on Leica's too which can be very important for e.g. sea-watching. You can also try the amazing Kowa Prominar there too and then consider taking a big gulp, waving your credit card at it and dealing with the consequences later!

the lens apparently are : HDF HR 60/66& HDF ZOOM 665 EB16/20-

sounds like a good deal to me very good scope and opticron usually give a very good guarantee 20 years+.if you have a hdf eyepiece this also helps.i personally prefer the leica apo but these increase the price to around £600 just for the scope with eyepiece and this is ebays prices second hand.
i own the older version opticron classic which is also a great scope ebay price about £100. still wishing for a leica

There's no doubt Opticron make good optics on the whole Roy and the scope you mention does have the advantage of ED glass which offers superior light transmission over other models without it. The scope is, in my opinion, one of the better mid-range options (of that objective lens diameter), any jump up from that gets on towards the £1000 mark with relative ease but choosing a scope should always involve looking through it yourself to really make your mind up.

Opticron's GS665 GA ED is small, lightweight, has a 65mm objective lens (so lets a decent amount of light through anyway) and the offer of 2 lenses is nice in that whilst the zoom will offer a relatively small field of view but more magnification (up to 48x), I'd be hoping the other would be perhaps the 25X with wide angle, which would be a great combination.

On the whole, if you're budget is around that figure (and I always try to stretch the budget as much as possible ) then it's a very worthy scope, if you're budget can stretch, then the benefits and quality increase too.

As for the price? South west Optics are offering the same new scope, zoom eyepeice, stay-on-case and carbon tripod for £599.00, so you can make your own mind up about that

Been offered a Opticron GS665 GA ED with 2 eye pieces (1 zoom ), cover and a carbon tripod for what I believe to be a fair price (under £400) , can any body offer any advice , if these are a average scope to start with. As I am in the same position as with the bins , hoping you chaps cann offer a users point of view. Many Thanks Roy