To use the paper analogy, the sheets of paper are brought together so that the distance from the image to the eye are the same for both. The farther apart the two planes are, the more parallax will affect bullet placement.įixing parallax means that the reticle and target must be adjusted to be on the same plane within the scope. If the rifle is moving, it’s impossible to have the type of accuracy your customer is looking for. The result is that the shooter must move the rifle slightly each time the eye is moved. The only way to get perfect accuracy in this situation is to have perfect eye alignment - something that rarely happens when humans are involved. Position A has a different point of impact on the target than position B. You can see that if the reticle hangs in front of the target, aiming errors will occur based on eye position. But as soon as the eye moves slightly to one side (as in position B), the fact that the reticle and target are on different planes means that the bullet’s point of impact changes. If the eye remained centered in the scope in position A, the parallax error would not cause a problem. If the reticle was drawn on one sheet of paper and the target on another, there would be a separation between the two sheets. That’s what it means to say they are not on the same plane. But you’ll notice that the reticle appears to be hanging out in front of the target. The scope is lined up, and you’re ready to shoot. The eye starts in position A and looks through the reticle at the target. If that sounds hard to understand, that’s because it’s hard to visualize without some assistance. Parallax errors occur when the reticle and the target objective are not on the same plane. But, if the shooter hasn’t taken the time to properly focus the scope and then adjust the parallax, the reticle will not be stable relative to the target image. All that’s needed is to line up the reticle with the target and shoot. It’s not necessary to form a sight picture by lining up the sights to the target. Scopes utilize a single reticle instead of separate front and rear iron sights. You’re going to have to educate your customer about parallax. They will be coming back to see you and will likely think it’s a problem with the gear you sold them rather than an adjustment. This floating reticle gives slightly different aiming points, so it’s hard to know what’s correct and what’s not. More precisely, that is the visual effect of parallax that is out of adjustment. They try to center their eye in the eyepiece, but the reticle still moves around based on their eye position. Not understanding parallax, they look through their new scope and find that the reticle (crosshairs) seem to “float” on the target. But when they assemble it all and take it to the range, they can’t seem to get the kind of performance they were expecting. You’ve helped them pick out a long-range rifle, a scope, mounts, a bipod and all the other accessories needed for their new hobby. Imagine that you’ve sold equipment to a shooter interested in precision rifle competition. If you’re going to sell optics to these customers, they are likely to be higher-end scopes with very prominent parallax adjustment knobs requiring you to explain how to use them. For that group, an understanding of parallax and how it affects accuracy is crucial to their success. But there’s an expanding class of shooters who seek to shoot long distances with pinpoint accuracy. That’s because it isn’t a major concern when shooting large animals at typical hunting distances. Surprisingly, many shooters that have been using scoped rifles for years haven’t even thought about parallax. If you ask 10 rifle shooters to explain parallax, you’re likely to get 10 different answers, and very few of them will be adequate for new shooters to comprehend. Talking about scope parallax is different. Most are usually easy to understand because your customers can visualize them as they are explained. First focal plane, second focal plane, reticle differences … the list goes on. There are a lot of terms to know when talking to customers about riflescopes.
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