Upgrade coming for March scopes

[Turbulent Turtle]

That's a fine looking double booth. Lots of great riflescopes in there.

Btw: I'm very pleased with my March-X 5-50X56, 18 months on.

 

[Turbulent Turtle]

With all things being equal between the two (which they aren't), Fluorite has a much higher light transmission than ED glass due to the zero scatter within Fluorite. Nikon did a great job when marketing the ED glass using the "manufacturers speak".

BTW: Nikon uses Fluorite elements in 7 of their high-end lenses. A bit of backpedaling.

I did some further research about this and got some interesting information at the Canon website. Canon is well-known for its use of fluorite glass in several of its lenses.


I got the information at this link:

http://cpn.canon-europe.com/content/education/infobank/lenses/fluorite_aspherical_and_ud_lenses.do


I urge you to read the page where you will find out why fluorite glass is so expensive and fragile, but later down the page we get to this:


“The emergence of UD glass and Super-UD glass came after Canon had successfully incorporated fluorite into some of its lenses. Using optical glass, rather than fluorite, to correct chromatic aberrations, is more cost-effective, so Canon directed its research into high-performance lenses manufactured from ordinary optical glass.

UD glass is similar to fluorite in that it features a low refractive index and low dispersion. Although it is not quite as good as fluorite, its performance is significantly better than ordinary optical glass. So by using UD glass Canon has been able to manufacture a range of lenses with superior performance and at a lower cost than before.”

UD and Super-UD seem to be equivalent terms for ED and Super-ED, so it’s not just Nikon that is using “manufacturer speak.”

I would also say that Nikon using fluorite glass is some of its lenses is not "backpedaling." We all agree that fluorite glass is best for correcting chromatic aberration and in very high-end cameras, that's very desirable. That said, ED or UD does a great job of doing that also, just not quite as well as fluorite glass.

I also found out that indeed, fluorite glass is only used for one or maybe two elements in a camera lens and I suspect strongly that will be the same in a riflescope. Further, since fluorite glass is so fragile and so difficult to make, or in this case, grow, I’m pretty certain the objective lens (the first one to accept the incoming light, therefore the one most responsible for overall light transmission,) will NOT be made of fluorite glass, it will most probably be a small internal lens. So the use fluorite glass for one or maybe two elements in a riflescope will have negligible and imperceptible impact in overall light transmission. The only reason I can see for using fluorite glass is for that extra little bitty possibility of correction of chromatic aberrations. As I said earlier, this is a good thing for photographers, I’m not sold on the benefit for target shooters.


I have noticed the difference on target between regular glass and ED glass, but you have to know what to look for. My guess is that March will replace the ED element(s) in the existing March-X scopes with a fluorite element(s) and boost the price several hundred dollars. Maybe they will change the name to March-Why or March-Y for short.


Wait and see.