Rifle Scopes Adjustable objectives and sight picture

[Snipers]

I don’t have much experience with variable power scopes and adjustable objectives. I have noticed that dialing out the parallax creates fuzziness around the outer edges of the field of view. It is clear with good resolution for about 75% of the field of view (center), and a “fuzzy doughnut” for the remaining 25%. If I adjust the parallax farther out, the fuzziness clears up considerably, but I’m left with parallax issues. Is it common for $1,500+ optics to do this, or is this the tradeoff one makes for a mid-priced scope?

 

[dcjs]

Re: Adjustable objectives and sight picture

Sounds like the image your scope creates is curved considerably, meaning the edge of the field of view is sharp at a different distance than the center. Refocusing the objective (which is what happens during parallax adjustment) might give you an "intermediate" setting that makes all of your image appear sharp (while it will in fact rather be "uniformly unsharp"), but your parallax setting will be off for the center where it matters.

What you are experiencing sounds like a logical consequence of a curved image plane which is a porperty of the optical design.