Rangefinders

[mekender]

dont be afraid to look at the ones used for golfing... they might be cheaper

[D5CAV]

Some friends loaned me their laser rangefinders to use on some hunts. A Bushnell 900 and a Leica 1200. Frankly, I don't recall significant difference between them in performance, but the Leica was smaller and lighter -- always good on a hunt. I never bought one myself, however.

I found them to be interesting toys, but of limited utility to the type of hunting I do. I'm not confident in getting a clean kill on a deer-size animal past 300m, so my shots stay well inside that. Knowing that a deer is 600m away gives me the precision of '600m' vs. the less precise 'too far to shoot', but the end result is the same.

Two things that you remember from physics once you start playing with laser rangefinders:
1. Angular error
2. Divergence

Angular error is the biggest issue. Unless you have the rangefinder mounted on a tripod, you will have a hard time holding it on a target out to 1000m. Inside 300m they work great, but so do the 'coincident rangefinders' that G-d gave me. Even the military ones that go out to 3000m (and have all kinds of warning stickers that say 'don't look here' and 'this side to target') are mounted on stable platforms (like a tank turret).

Divergence is the beam getting larger as it goes out further, like the beam from a flashlight. Divergence is less with a laser, but still there. A good laser should give about 1.5mm to 2.0mm of divergence per meter of distance, so that pencil-thin beam is almost two meters wide at 1000m. If your target is small, you may be getting the range to something else.

Ranging out to 1000m is a tricky proposition. What you are paying for with the Swarovski is the glass, not the laser. I'd go with a moderately priced Bushnell and play with it. Figure out how it works for you in the terrain you're using before spending big $$s on one.

I don't have a lot of experience with laser rangefinders (outside of the one that was attached to my tank, which worked great!), but I hope this helps!

[SeekHer]

I really can't help you out here as we only have the ship mounted prismatic rangefinders for distance shooting and none of these new fangled laser thing-a-ma-bobs...Sorry, very old school...We do have a bunch of lesser accurate at distance models by Bushnell and others but are accurate for bow/BP hunting ranges and most shots on varmints to about 600 or 650 yards...past that distance in the field its all up to experience and luck to bag a gopher or coyote at 900 yards or so...

For your shooting, forget the golf finders as they just don't have the range and accuracy to make the call for distance...they can be off by 30’ at 300 yards (maybe 100' @ 1K), which is close enough for a white ball but not for your usage...

DSCAF is so right about keeping them steady...we've had errors of as much as 100 feet at 1K with the handheld laser jobs and we know the distance is correct from where we shoot in the barn...The ship ones are mounted on huge, old wooden tripods that weight at least 50 lbs but are solid as rock...

There was a L shaped mount that went on a tripod so that you could use a second implement of some kind...camera and scope/binos, scope and rangefinder etc. but I have no idea who makes them now as the five of mine have got to be 20+ years old...I found them in a now defunct camera store and there is absolutely no markings anywhere on them...

I imagine they would not be hard to make as all it is, is a screw on bracket with a threaded male (bolt) on top of it and it extends out X" from the joint and where another screw mount is located to take the second object...You could make them up with extensions on either side of the primary items say a finder, scope and camera combo...or maybe bent it up and have the other item suspended above the primary which I think would work better…

[HTRN]

I really can't help you out here as we only have the ship mounted prismatic rangefinders for distance shooting and none of these new fangled laser thing-a-ma-bobs...Sorry, very old school…

Deutsche Optik had the optical rangefinder for a while - surplus Barr & Strouds. Now they got East German Carl Jena EM-61(about $500), and OEM-2($1500, quite possibly the most expensive rangefinder ever made - cost RM138K, about 60 grand in todays dollars). Anybody wanna loan me some money?

North American Integrated Technologies (NAIT) made some really nice(meaning $$$$) extremely long range laser jobs, but they're website no longer lists rangefinders.


HTRN

[SeekHer]

I really can't help you out here as we only have the ship mounted prismatic rangefinders for distance shooting and none of these new fangled laser thing-a-ma-bobs...Sorry, very old school…

Deutsche Optik had the optical rangefinder for a while - surplus Barr & Strouds. Now they got East German Carl Jena EM-61 (about $500), and OEM-2 ($1500, quite possibly the most expensive rangefinder ever made - cost RM138K, about 60 grand in todays dollars). Anybody wanna loan me some money? :D

North American Integrated Technologies - NAIT made some really nice (meaning $$$$) extremely long range laser jobs, but they're website no longer lists rangefinders.
Fixed it for you
HTRN

We, Insane Shooters, have gotten four of the allied ship's finders, two Warsaw Pact and one Israeli land finder ("artillery") over the years and I know we got three and I believe four of them from Deutsche Optik...my late father bought a Russian Border Patrol 6x40mm binoculars that one of my brothers got and I have bought their older 65mm and 80mm Optolyth spotting scopes and there are at least another 20 pair of binos around here including two of those periscope style that were used in the trenches and I missed out on a pair of 20x120mm Israeli Border Guard binos like the ones we used in the border shacks, one of the guys has the East German version that is spectacular—you can count the whiskers on a coyote at 600 yards with them, they are that sharp and colour correct...

Their repair department is excellent and they have very good customer service department and is why I've recommended them a number of times in the past in this forum...They always have some really great military surplus that they come across but you have to get on it right away or it's gone, like my IDF binos…they used to carry a full line of new watches before that were very classy and similar to the various armed forces models dating to WW1 like the rectangular officer’s model, now called a tanker style but of unbelievable horology and priced as such…major, serious, drool factor and accurate to a second a year for a manual wind watch—incredible!

There new 100mm Optolyth spotting scopes are scary in their clarity, brightness, colour separation, no edge distortion or blurring but also in their price, scope is $2,425 and the eye piece is 521 = $2,946.00…the 65mm were half that and the 80mm a third less…I also love their Optolyth 25x70XS Collapsible Fieldscope which now retails for $1,419.00 but I picked up for two thirds that price years…Sorry, I shouldn’t keep gushing forth with all this vindictive stuff against them, someone might think I dislike them!

EXTRA, EXTRA LATE BREAKING NEWS!
They have the Carl Zeiss-Jena Rangefinder · Observation Binocular EM-61-P on sale for $489 regular $899--4mm exit pupil, effective range of 400-18,000m, accurate to 10cm @ 3,000M...You can have hours of fun up on the hillside with this rangefinder; even more if you can hook up with a small field piece, like an Italian 70mm…Total weight is 121 lbs!

The Carl Zeiss-Jena Rangefinder/ Observation Binocular OEM-2 for $1,999.00 weighs in with accessories 80KG (176 lbs) and the tripod is another 18KG (41lbs) and I've read elsewhere that it's accurate to 30cm @ 5km (about a foot)

Check under Precision Instruments

[Darrell]

Binocular "L" bracket mounts are easy to find or to make. They just use 1/4-20 screws. Use your search engine, all sorts of stuff will come up. Here are two, the first a pretty basic mount:

http://www.telescope.com/control/produc ... t_id=05259

The second one has slow motion controls for fine adjustment or tracking moving objects:

http://www.telescope.com/control/produc ... t_id=07033

[HTRN]

NAIT's website is here.


HTRN

[308Mike]

DSCAF is so right about keeping them steady...we've had errors of as much as 100 feet at 1K with the handheld laser jobs and we know the distance is correct from where we shoot in the barn...The ship ones are mounted on huge, old wooden tripods that weight at least 50 lbs but are solid as rock...

I had my Bushnell 800 out at Rumpshot's Revenge III, and you're not kidding about the need to keep the hand-held models steady. The only time I was able to get consistent readings is when I was able to prop myself and the rangefinder against something stationary. But when I was able to do so, I was able to get consistent readings on large rocks almost 500 yards away.

[Denis]

Well, Chris, the German army is auctioning nine Zeiss Eldi 2 M infrared laser 0-5000m rangefinders here. The auction closes on 24 November at 13.00 German time. You'd have to bid on groups of three instruments at a time though... Army-surplus stores sell them for about 1000 Euro.

[D5CAV]

Well, Chris, the German army is auctioning nine Zeiss Eldi 2 M infrared laser 0-5000m rangefinders here. The auction closes on 24 November at 13.00 German time. You'd have to bid on groups of three instruments at a time though... Army-surplus stores sell them for about 1000 Euro.

These look like EDMs for survey. They mount with a theodolite for long line measurement. They need a corner reflector to range IIRC. You probably see construction workers using these on road construction sites -- a tripod mounted total station aimed at a corner reflector on another tripod. I don't believe these can get a range to a non-reflecting surface at 5000m.

If I am wrong, and these can range to any object to 5000m, then I would be very interested.