I don't think I have ever gotten as many calls or requests for information as I have on the new Leica Televid 77 spotting scopes. Everybody wants to know. What is it? Is it good? How does it compare?
What everybody is hoping for, obviously, is the final killer scope‹the one from Leica‹the one that is going to blow everything currently on the market away.
Leica has taken the bold step of labeling their top of the line scope "APO." APO in optical speak means that the scope is completely color corrected‹it is supposed to bring all the primary colors of light to exactly the same focus. Run of the mill achromats only attempt to bring 2 colors to the same focus, and ED or Fluorite designs improve color focus, but do not claim complete color correction.
The Leica scopes are in short supply. Dealers can't keep them in stock, and Leica USA has very few to show around.
I won't keep you in suspense. The Leica Televid is an exceptional scope, exceptionally well designed, with exceptional optics. A worthy example of traditional Leica craftsmanship and innovation. (When you can use the words "traditional" and "innovation" in the same sentence, that says something unique about a company.) There are, however, scopes on the market that equal its performance in many areas, and that are even superior in certain ways. The Televid is good, exceptionally good, but it is not the killer scope.
Clearly the best design innovation is the split, dual ratio, focus control. (If some other company did this first, my apologies, but I am aware of no current production scope with the dual ratio feature.) The focus knob looks like a fairly standard knob that has been spit: two thirds / one third. The back, larger, portion of the knob has high ratio gearing so that turning it racks the focus fairly rapidly from close­in to far­out. The front portion of the control has a low gear ratio, so that turning it moves the focus mechanism much more slowly, so that you can sneak up on perfect focus. The two parts of the knob are linked‹turning one turns the other. To see the difference in ratio all you have to do is turn the rapid focus portion and watch the fine focus spin so fast the little grippy ridges blur. Any sales person who can't sell this scope simply by demonstrating the blurring grippies, and throwing around some dual ratio focus talk, should probably be in another line of work. Seriously though, it is one of those ideas that makes you wonder why everyone doesn't do it that way.
Some of the other innovations are not so flashy, but show attention to detail that is worthy of Leica. The slide out lens shade is nice, and it is made even nicer by the simple addition of a molded in peep sight‹two little raised bars at the back and a single bar at the front. Line up the front bar between the back bars and your target and, with a wide angle eyepiece, you should be pretty close to right on when you look through the scope. At first I wondered why they didn't fix the lens shade so that the sight was always at the top, but then I discovered that it was indeed handy to be able to place it off to one side slightly so that it was easier to see around the focus housing.
They have also molded a flat bar into the rubber armor across the bottom of the rounded prism housing so that the scope doesn't helplessly roll over when you sit it down on flat surface. That's what I call attention to detail!
The dual thread tripod mount may turn out to be more hassle than it is worth, at least in the USA. Many European tripods have a heavier 3/8 inch mounting screw. US tripods use a 1/4 inch screw. The Leica mount is tapped for 3/8 European standard, and supplied with a screw­in adapter for 1/4 inch. On the unit I received for testing, the 1/4 inch adapter was missing. I suspect it is still attached to the 1/4 inch screw of the last US tripod the scope was used with. It wouldn't be much of problem if you were using the scope with only one tripod, and the tripod with only this scope, but if the adaptor is at all loose, much switching around could become a real trial. Then too, it is just the size object that is most likely to get lost‹dropped in a stream‹slid down between the seats of the car‹etc. I can hear it pinging off the rocks all the way to the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
The scope has a definite European look. The prism housing is underslung like the Swarovski AT series for increased stability on the tripod, and the housing is an efficient gun metal gray with darker accents‹overall an attractive package in an industrial design sort of way.
Are you beginning to wonder why I am taking so long getting to the optics? Optically, Leica has had some tough competition. On the one hand they had the Nikon Fieldscope 78, with a three element ED objective that, if it isn't APO, is certainly very, very, close to it. On the other, they had the Swarovski AT series with what has to be the finest zoom eyepiece ever made, set of fixed eyepieces that are every bit as good as the zoom, and, in the HD model, excellent color correction (though not in the APO class). That's two tough hands to be between already, and that is discounting scopes like the Tele Vue Pronto and Ranger, and the Questar, which set the optical standards at the cost of a less traditional package than prismatic scopes like the Leica, Nikon, and Swarovski. What could Leica do to top that field?
In critical testing, comparing the Nikon 78 and the Leica 77 with their zooms at equivalent powers, my sample of the Nikon just edged out the Leica every time. We are talking very close here. Using the dollar bill test as outlined in the Test Your Own article in the next issue, the Nikon resolved detail at about 6 inches to a foot further out than the Leica at all powers‹that is 6 inches out of close to 70 feet. I am certainly willing to believe that that much difference could be covered by individual unit variation (see the piece on Quality Control elsewhere in this issue). I am not confident that two different samples of the Nikon and Leica scopes would necessarily show the same tested relationship. Maybe I am comparing a cherry Nikon to a just averagely superior Leica (you have to have the context here, so please do read the Quality Control article).
Compared to the Questar or the Pronto, the Leica is still unmistakably a prismatic scope. Though it comes very, very close, it is not able to equal the brightness or resolution of either, but then, it is not really fair to expect it to. Prisms have their price, but they also have a very real benefit in ease of use in the field.
As far as the APO designation goes: The Leica showed almost exactly the same amount of secondary color as the Nikon in out-of-focus images, though both showed considerably less than conventional scopes. With any test for color correction in complete optical systems, of course, it is very difficult to say how much of the secondary color comes from the objective and how much comes from the particular eyepiece you are using. Without more sophisticated testing equipment, I can't really prove or disprove Leica's claim to APO performance, but I can say that the color purity of the image is among the best I have seen.
Overall then, the optical performance of the Televid is exceptional, certainly placing it right up there among the top currently available spotting scopes, though it sets no new standards.
The zoom, however, is not everything I had hoped it would be. It is excellent, only the third usable zoom on the market so far, but I had expected something from Leica that would at least equal the overall performance of the Swarovski zoom. The Leica zoom is sharp, with a fairly wide field, bright and contrasty at low powers, and acceptable at all powers. Compared to most other zooms on the market, even those sold for the highest quality scopes, that is real achievement. However, the Leica still displays what I call the standard zoom artifact. With most zooms, as you increase power both eyerelief and field of view shrink until you get the feeling you are looking through a peep hole at an image floating about 3 inches in front of your eye. The shirking and the distancing is progressive, as you zoom back to wide field it feels as though your eye is getting closer and closer to the image until, at widest field, you are no longer looking at an image, you are looking at the object itself. Then too, with most zooms, you are very aware that there are moving elements in there doing strange things to the image as you zoom. The Leica zoom has much less of this zoom artifact than most zooms sold for high quality scopes. It has, however, more of it than the Nikon zoom, which, partially because it is a lower ratio zoom (25-56X on the 78 as opposed to 20-60X for the Leica) has very little, and a good deal more than the Swarovski, which has, amazingly, so little that it is not really noticeable at all, even in the same power ratio as the Leica. The Leica zoom is a very good zoom, certainly usable in the field as your primary eyepiece, but it is still unmistakably a zoom. Both the Nikon and Swarovski zooms somehow manage to be zooms without making you feel like you are using one.
The other eyepiece I had for testing, the 20X wide field, was very impressive‹the kind of eyepiece that, like the dual ratio focus control, should sell a lot of Televids. This is a wide wide field eyepiece, giving what, in relative terms, you might be tempted to call a panoramic view (the field is a full five times that of the zoom at its 20X setting), and eyerelief is long enough so that the full field is visible with eyeglasses. It is very sharp, very contrasty, and has no visible distortions, quite a feat for such a wide field. In critical testing, it couldn't quite equal the fine resolution of the Leica zoom at its 20X setting, but, with a wide field eyepiece it isn't the minute detail you are after anyway. If you like a wide eyepiece this one could spoil you for anything else. It is very close to the performance of the Nagler 22mm Panoptic for the Tele Vue Pronto and Ranger, and that is impressive indeed.
Both eyepieces feature the pop-up eyecups that Leica pioneered on their Ultra binoculars. The actual cup surface appears somewhat softer and more forgiving than on the binoculars. As I have said before, the only improvement needed is a series of click stops or a twist-to-lock arrangement that would allow you to adjust the cups somewhere between full up and full down.
So what do we have here? Even though Leica has not created the killer scope, they have produced a product of such high quality, with enough distinctive features, that it has to rank among the top three 77-80mm prismatic scopes currently on the market. With the Leica name on it, I predict that you will see an increasing number of them in the field.