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Michael
and Diane Porter and a team of Iowa birders tested 24 spotting scopes
for a review in the March, 2003, issue
of Bird Watcher's Digest. This account is includes material from
that review, plus some additional observations not in the original
article.
 Among
the small scopes, at 20x, the 65mm Zeiss tied for first place in
resolution with the Leica 62 APO Telvid.
Our judges found no fault in this small Zeiss scope's superb optics.
However, if you're interested in maximum resolution, you'll actually
see greater detail with the Swarovoski
ATS or STS 65. That's because while the same Swarovski zoom eyepiece
provides 20-60x both in the 65mm scopes and in the 80mm scopes,
the Zeiss zoom has a smaller range when used with the smaller scope.
In the Diascope 65 it functions at15-45 power instead of 20-60x.
As a result, we found we could resolve finer detail with the small
Swarovski than with the small Zeiss.
However our judges still loved this small Zeiss Diascope. It has
the wonderful dual knobs for fast-or-fine focusing, and the mechanism
let the judges focus more delicately than with the Leica, with less
disturbance of the image.
Of course, the Zeiss Diascope 65mm scopehas fluorite lenses and
is waterproof, like its big brother, and like all Zeiss products.
--Michael and Diane Porter
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Zeiss
Diascope 65T FL 