I agree with everything you're saying here. But the reality is that two people can take two different scopes into the field at the same time, compare side-by-side, and they very well may see differently. If you want to have an aneurysm, go to birdforum.net and spend a few minutes reading binocular reviews - imagine political discussions, except about optics. There's just too many factors to take into consideration. I don't doubt your experience, it's not my place to do so. I know there are plenty of guys who have spent far more time in the woods than I have and I am not in a position to question their qualifications. But I do understand how light and glass interact, so as far as low-light reviews go, and after some thought, I'm not comfortable giving my personal opinion on what may be the most important factor in a scope to a lot of people. I don't want to be personally responsible when somebody misses the trophy of a lifetime based on something I said.

As an aside, I know that a lot of what I have to say on this forum is written off as marketing by a lot of members. They will take what I say as subjective evidence and rule it out simply because I happen to be a dealer. A lot of what I have written in my reviews is based on my personal observations, and certainly not authoritative by any means. Granted, I am a sponsor here, and I am running a business, but I have nothing to gain by deceiving members, and everything to lose.

On the other hand, I've been honest in my reviews and my customers have consistently agreed with what I've had to say about products I've featured, so I think I'm doing something right.

I'm not saying this because I think you're wrong - in fact, I think you're absolutely spot-on with your methods, and they are excellent guidelines for one person comparing scopes for themselves. But in addition to my personal concerns, I see a lot of turnover of rifle scopes and don't always have the luxury of doing a side by side comparison like I did here. If I could take every scope I've ever sold and do a side-by-side comparison in one day in low-light conditions, I would... but I don't have the ability or schedule to do so.

I actually called a photographer friend of mine after I posted my earlier responses. He's been published nationally, has a huge portfolio and years of experience, and does a lot of DIY camera building, so I was comfortable asking him for help with this. We're working on designing a closed system that we can use to evaluate not just rifle scopes, but every optic that comes through inventory. Our goal is to rule out any personal bias and environmental variables, so we can say, "This optic has this low light performance, period."

First of all, we're going to use some kind of electronic measurement to determine exactly how much light is transmitted through each optic we test, and do so in a controlled environment so we can mathematically calculate the effective low-light transmission across whatever we're testing. This may not be a real-world measurement of usefulness in the field, but it will provide some baseline that we can use to compare scopes on an unbiased, scientific level. This won't be useful in the field, but you can think of it as any other "on paper" technical spec. We don't have spectrophotography equipment (or the budget for it), so we're going to go the DIY route and build a test bench.

Second, we're going to try to do so by photographing the results in the most detailed manner possible. This may not be an exact picture of what you'll see when looking through the scope, but it will show differences in brightness, clarity, sharpness, color bias, and chromatic aberration so we can try to capture as many of the real-world performance factors as possible. This will give everybody a chance to see the sight picture through every scope we test and give them the ability to compare it to every other scope. In a controlled environment, the results should be directly comparable and people can draw their own conclusions, instead of relying on what a dealer has to say about it. Again, not a perfect real-world demonstration, but much closer than the best rundown I can give.

I don't believe anybody has done this yet, so if nothing else, I can tell myself that we're innovating.

You should PM me so we can talk about your reviews, I am always looking for knowledgeable people who want to evaluate product, and I'm sure that your experience would make for some good reading.