Nikon monarch 5 6-30x50 ed bdc riflescope. - Nikon Monarch 5 6-30x50 ED SF Rifle Scope

Among all the world’s riflescope manufacturers, Nikon has arguably done the best job of making it easy to buy the right scope for specific shooting jobs. The company doesn’t leave you guessing. Its SlugHunter scope includes a BDC reticle tailored to common slug and sabot trajectories. Its Muzzleloader scopes are preset for the trajectories of most modern, in-line muzzleloaders. Can you guess what rounds match up with the M-308 and P-223 scopes? Any BDC reticle can be calibrated to work with virtually any cartridge/bullet/velocity, but building a specific scope with a specific reticle matched to a specific rifle/cartridge/bullet makes things easier for the customer, and Nikon reaps the rewards.
But Nikon isn’t banking just on convenience. The company matches that to high optical quality, precision manufacturing, an impressive No Fault lifetime warranty and innovative customer support through a free online Spot On ballistic software program that guides users in setting up a scope’s reticle to match a particular load. It’s a customer service program that makes the Nikon line quite attractive.
One of the more versatile, all-round hunting scopes from Nikon is its new Monarch 5 ED in 3X-15X-50mm built on a 1-inch main tube milled from a solid block of aluminum. From elk in tight brush to rodents 700 yards out, this scope has the magnification to handle it. While I’m not crazy about bulky 50mm objectives, the extra light they take in certainly helps at powers above 10X. Dialed to 15X, this scope’s exit pupil is still restricted to 3.3mm, which isn’t anywhere close to what the human pupil could handle at dusk when dilated. Still, it beats the heck out of the 2.6mm exit pupil you’d get with a 40mm objective at 15X. If you imagine you’ll need to target game at 15X in low light, you’ll welcome the 50mm.
Light transmission is further enhanced via fully multi-coated lenses. The number of anti-reflection layers and which wavelengths of light they address Nikon doesn’t specify, but with all optics what you see is what you get. Smart scope shoppers compare the view through various models to assess light transmission, contrast and flare control. Compared to Swarovski’s excellent Z5 3.5X-18X-44mm 1-inch main tube scope (with both instruments set to a 4.4mm exit pupil) my subjective observation as a lifelong photographer was that the Nikon might have been a half to two-thirds stop darker. With the evening sun just peeking into the upper right quadrant of the objective lens I detected the first hint of flare—ghost suns in the lower left quadrant. Contrast in the shadows was good enough to differentiate between small branches of a pine and maple intertwined 400 yards away. That closely approached the contrast performance of the Swarovski as well as a Meopta Meopro 4.5X-14X-44mm.
Thirty minutes after sunset I could clearly see the Nikon BDC reticle at 15X against dark brown boulders and a dark pine 80 to 100 yards away, and a neutral gray wall 473 yards out. At 8X the main crosshair even showed against the shadowy interior of a rocky overhang, though I couldn’t make out the sub-reticles. In this extreme test the Meopta appeared to be a stop brighter, but both of the optics would have permitted accurate targeting. Against yellow grass the Nikon reticle was sharply defined 45 minutes after sunset even at 15X.
An extra-low dispersion (ED) glass lens in the Monarch 5 enhances optical quality by focusing more light wavelengths closer to the same point. It nearly eliminates color fringing. (You see color fringing as a halo, usually yellow or orange, around the edges of antlers, ears, etc.) Color fringing becomes increasingly apparent at magnifications above 10X and softens the look of the image. I detected none in this Monarch at top power. Straight-line objects pushed to the very edges of the view showed no barrel or pincushion distortion, either.
Besides color fringing, high-power scopes can suffer from parallax, the result of a scope not focusing the target in the same plane as the reticle. Parallax can be detected by locking the scope on target, then shifting your eye left, right, up and down while watching the target against the reticle. As your eye shifts off axis, the target will appear to shift behind the reticle much like the numbered mph scale shifts behind the speed needle on cars from the 1960s. A parallax shift of just .5 inch at 100 yards becomes 3 inches at 600 yards and 5 inches at 1,000 yards. Nikon fixes that with a side parallax adjustment knob, just what the precision shooter ordered. This focuses the scope precisely from about 45 yards clear to the moon. Nikon designers were smart enough to build this knob with a push/pull lock so you won’t inadvertently be bumping it out of adjustment. Pull out on the knurled cap, turn to eliminate parallax, push in to lock it. Tension is uniform and precise.
In keeping with the long-range potential of this scope, Nikon offers it with an etched-glass Advanced BDC reticle.