Celestron 52305 Regal M2 80ED Spotting Scope

Very nice scope worth the £650, nice crisp image gets bit darker if zoom past 45x but it's still great value, have upgraded mine to the 100mm version which has perfect zoom up to 67x loses no brightness. Both scopes are heavy though need a good stable tripod.

I spent some time researching which scope to buy and this seemed to tick all the boxes. It arrived very quickly and I have been very pleased with its performance.Ii feel it represents excellent value for money and would reccommend it to anyone

Absolutely crystal clear images with its supplied eyepiece at 20x. Acceptable and usable even at the 60x end of the scale. Reasonably good at 40x. Focus is very smooth and arguably, the dual focus isn't required but is a nice addition. Works well with other 1.25" eyepieces (tried with 3.8 mm Orion Ultrascopic, 10 mm Tele Vue Radian, 12.5 mm Antares Plossl, 20 mm Meade Super Plossl and 32 mm Antares Plossl - the 10 mm and 32 mm being the best.) Also works with a 2x Barlow. Poor for digiscoping through the supplied eyepiece (or at least it is with a Canon EOS 60D). Using the eyepiece set to 20x with the supplied adapter and an EOS T adapter, I got okay images but they were soft even at the centre (very soft just off centre) and had patches in places - like lens flare, which clearly isn't possible where it was used. Zoom even slightly and the image "whites-out" in the centre and diagonally upward. Also, the tripod mount doesn't have sufficient range to balance the scope with attached DSLR. Back-focus limits means you can't adequately use it for digiscoping without an eyepiece, even with a compact nose-piece. With a short (modified) 2x Barlow, it can be used out to say 100 m. It's well made although frustratingly has a couple of specks of dust inside its nitrogen filled body. Fortunately the one in the middle of the glass at the eyepiece end of the tube doesn't impact viewing. The cover zips back sufficiently to allow the scope to be tripod mounted whilst fitted but has to be folded forward to allow the focus to be used. The front lens cover is hard to remove and the lens hood is difficult to extend with the cover on i.e. it's a cover for carrying the scope but not practical for remaining in-place whilst in use. Summing up, fantastic at 20x zoom, works very well with standard 1.25" eyepieces but not good for digiscoping.

Cracking scope. Beautifully sharp optics. Good quality zoom eyepiece. The ability to use my astronomical eyepieces if I want as it's also very useable as an occassional casual astro scope. Clever stay-on case that sits nicely over your shoulder. If I had one really petty niggle it's the eyepiece cover that has a very fine thread that I can't unscrew silently! I think I can fix that with a little damping :-) Seriously pleased with this scope.

Excellent value for money - puts some other more expensive scopes to shame!

Good product