RedAllison

Ditto what these guys said... The 50s are STRICTLY offered in lower powered scopes solely for marketing purposes. Rather than fight the trend, they are saying "what the heck, lets not argue with them just give em what they ask for". Even if what they ask for is a waste of money and time. The human eye has a maximum dialation of around 4.5mm. (Dont wanna make ya mad, but the older you get the less that number becomes!)

A scope has a pupil just like a human eye. You can get its measurement by dividing the scopes objective measurement, in this case 40, by the power, lets use 9. That equates to around 4.33mm. For govt work lets call that close enough too 4.5mm. (Sound like a familiar number?) The Conquest series will transmit over 95% of the light it gathers and 95% of 4.5mm is a shade over 4mm. Still above the optimum pupil measurement of 4mm. Now if you are wondering, the same numbers when run on a 3x9x50 yield a pupil measurement of 5.2mm. That is larger than the human eye can accept. In other words its wasted money and light. Remember also, get to much light on your eye and what happens? Yep your pupil begins to close up/decrease in size which will then effect your lowlight vision capability.

Some may say, "Gimme the bigger one" but thats not really doing anything for them. All it does is make the scope larger, heavier and places the scope higher off the gun which interferes with the proper "line of sight too line of bore" relationship. Now remember also, you can only put so much light through a one inch hole. Thats why most of the premier 12+ power 56mm European scopes have 30mm tubes. Sure they allow for greater crosshair movement (internal clicks) but they also allow more light to be passed through them (no duh Red you say! but look at how many 50+ mm scopes are being offered on 1" tubes. Its strictly marketing for those things!) So its a combination of "hittin the numbers" along with also properly transfering the light that is recieved.

The 44mm on a 1" tube was chosen by Zeiss and Nikon for a reason. It allows one to reach that "magical 4" number I showed you while also retaining a lower profile like a more standard 40mm. They only recently went too 50s for simple marketing reasons!

Have a good one and enjoy that great scope,
RA

ps
Oh yeah, as for the Warnes, personally I think they are THE best detachable setup in the business. I have had one on a muzzleloader of mine (as much for ease of cleaning than removing for legal reasons when going out of state) for nearly 15 years without so much as a single incident from them!