ORIGINAL: bigcountry
Ok, first things first. Optics 101. With all things equal, the resolving power of a scope, microscope, camera lens or a 100mm telescope is proportional to the objective size. So biggest factor with resolution was which scope had a larger objective?
The scopes I compared all had 40mm objectivesand improper focusing was eliminated as a cause of the disparity. The Leupold was a VX III 3.5-10x40. The two Conquests were 3-9x40. I think it just boils down to Zeiss using a slightly higher quality glass (Schott) than what Leupold's Japanese source provides.