20 Best Scope For Cz 457 (2023 Updated)

This is my second purchase from Jacobs Digital and they have been prompt with their replies to emails. I ordered the Scope on a Monday and it arrived on the Wednesday so 5 stars for service. It was packaged in a fresh layer of cardboard which was sufficient.

I like the feeling of unboxing a brand new item and was a bit disappointed to find this one had previously been opened up and taped back down, however everything was there and all looking brand new. I bought this to use for hunting in Canterbury, it’s the second one I’ve owned the other was the Vanguard Vesta 460a 15-50 x 60 (would not recommend).

The Konus 80 is a hefty beast weighing around 1. 5kg. The solid metal casing is great with some rubber protection around high impact areas. The magnification & focus dials move with ease and it’s a straight forward scope to use.

The tripod that came with it is sufficient if your’e prepared to scan around from the ground. I used an old video camera stand which was insufficient and couldn’t cope with the weight, this scope needs a heavy duty stand.

I tired using the phone adapter on my iPhone XR – this was very fidgety to get the camera lens in place and I wasn’t satisfied with the end result. At 20 x magnification it’s easy to set the focus but once you start increasing the magnification it does become more difficult.

At maximum magnification you really do need a steady tripod otherwise the image is bouncing around too much to be able to set the focus. Other reviews mention being unhappy with the bag, I think the bag itself is fine and will provide enough protection, but the single strap they have stitched on to the side of the bag doesn’t make any sense because of it’s position and will probably end up tearing off if you used it to carry the scope over a long distance.

I don’t have the best eyesight and usually wear glasses which I removed, I was focusing in on birds along a local river and at 200 metres it was good and easy to increase the magnification. At 600 plus meters it was difficult to dial in the focus for a detailed view high magnification because even the light wind was having an affect on the image jumping around.

I don’t know if this will have the ability to produce a clear image at long range even with a good tripod. Compared with my other optics: vortex viper rifle scope & Bushnell engage bino’s, the image quality is not quite as clean and leaves me wondering what the image quality is like in the more expensive brands.

I can only compare this to the vesta, and the Konus80 is miles ahead in quality and magnification, although the vesta is a much smaller scope and one third the weight but at this stage I’m satisfied.

Superb, exceeded my expectations. Very sharp focus. Light gathering with the large aperture great. Would recommend this telescope without reservation. Best regards Steve

Overall its better than what I thought it would be for the price. I wanted something affordable to check groupings at 100-200m down range and this scope can do it easily. Very clear image at the low end of the magnification but becomes harder to focus when getting up to 60x zoom, but not terribly.

Tripod isnt the best it wobbles a bit in the wind. Smartphone adaption works but becomes hard to change magnification without losing your image in the process. But its effectiveness as a cheap entry level scope is overall good.

4/5 Would recommend.

– Delivery was very fast: I am living in France but I could receive my camera within 4 days. My single concern on this topic: UPS made me pay twice the taxes, the first one when I chose the option “UPS Express Duties & Taxes included” on the Longshot website, the second one when I received the scope at home.

This issue is only on UPS, but I suggest to European customers not to chose this option including duties & taxes. – The camera by itself: everything runs as expected. The wifi spot included in the camera takes some time to operate – 3 to 5 minutes in my case – and sometimes stalls down a few minutes later.

The image is really clear, be it displayed on an ipad or an iphone. – Note that, for the moment, I prefer to use my camera located near targets – I bought this scope camera for shooting indoors at 25 m – rather than placed on my scope.

The main reason is that my tripod is not stable enough to support the scope and the camera together.

I use a large retracting telescope as a hobby astronomer. This camera is easy to setup. Only only had it for a few days but managed to catch the recent sunspots. Good clear pictures. Probably never use it on the range but it certainly has lots of features.

Well pleased with the quality and full marks for the service I received for a few questions I had before, during and after my order. Well done.

The Halk camera and the app do what they claim and its a big improvment over just looking through a spotting scope or walking back and foth to the target. But like a lot of tech purchases what one imagines is rarely what we get.

What could be better is the video and picture quality it works could be better. The app functions “flash, shot marking and group measure ” could be automated but are manual. Sill better than the the old way not quite what I imagined.

My guess is that it could be better not sure i would have been willing to pay what that that product would have cost. For the price point it is a good product and i will enjoy using it. That is if ammo ever becomes available again.

Finder is well made. Easily screws securely into mount. Well worth the price. Now the murky part. Being an engineer, I dispensed with the instructions. The CG-4 mount has a fixture where the polar scope inserts.

The fixture has an internal o-ring and 3 radial positioning screws. The polar scope will not fit into that fixture no matter how hard you try. I than resorted to looking at instructions. 1st instruction: “Remove the finderscope housing on the rear of the telescope’s polar housing” This nicely machined fixture can than be thrown away and the polar scope neatly threaded into the back of the mount in its place.

I guess I couldn’t come to terms with really believing the finderscope housing was superfluous and does Celestron sell something that makes use of it? The back of the finderscope has a knurled knob. It looks like a means to focus the reticle , but if you loosen it, the reticle can be pushed out of its correct position and you have to unscrew the back piece and re-position the reticle.

If these comments are incorrect, I would like to hear about it.

Its a no frills polar scope, nothing more nothing less. Why it is not aligned in the factory is beyond me, it is an absolute PAIN to mess with the little hex key set screws that align the scope to your RA axis.

Major downer. Also the lack of illumination makes it next to impossible to see the reticle in the dark. Had to shine a flashlight into the from just to see where to put Polaris. Have the same issue with the polar scope on my AVX mount I own now.

Wish there was an aftermarket solution to these Celestron polar scopes.

Large errors in leveling, azimuth and altitude WILL affect the accuracy of the GOTO software in object acquisition and tracking on an equatorial mount. I find taking reasonable steps to accurately setup one’s equatorial mount goes a long way to enjoying the GOTO experience.

This little gadget may be overkill for a night of casual observing, but it is essential for the tacking demands of CCD imaging. I am old school and quick polar alignments are second nature. Knowing that I have a good polar alignment and an accurate GPS for my AVX mount insures that GOTO’s number crunching for errors is kept to a minimum.

Only careful preliminary star alignments remain for reliable deep sky hunting.

I familiarized myself with this device on my 2nd floor terrace with no view of Polaris and limited tree blocked sky view. I normally take the scope out to a local park or darkish sites for actual observing.

With the AVX mount rough aligned to Polaris and using one star alignment I used to ‘Impatient Instructions’. Along the way there were glitches, all related to operator error, none serious. Help is well written including a troubleshooting guide which was helpful for a ‘star moved too little’ error message.

The camera is sensitive with a wide field, so finding a star is easy. With star focused and calibration done, 3 to 5 minutes with my AVX mount, the autoguider/AVX combo tracking was rock solid with my Celestron 8 operating at ~850 mm(~F/4.

3) So why the but. ? Focusing is doable but kludgy. You slide the camera holder to get rough focus on a bright star, lock it in place with a locking ring, then fine focus using the objective lens helical focus.

Then you lock that focus with it’s knurled ring. Fortunately, focus remains fairly stable from session to session needing, at best, tweaks via the helical focus. Also, an extra cost adapter is needed to mount the kit on a Celestron 8.

I haven’t been able to get this out under the stars yet to test it’s accuracy and how it works with PHD2 because I HAVEN’T BEEN ABLE TO GET THIS TO BE RECOGNIZED IN WINDOWS 8. 1! I have a brand new Dell laptop, which is supposed to have one USB 3.

0 port on it, but I haven’t been able to get the computer to recognize the camera at all. On a Windows 7 computer, with the same drivers on a USB 2. 0 port, the camera works flawlessly, but I’m not going to drag my desktop computer out to my viewing site.

So, consider this a ‘Warning. ‘ If you have Windows 8/8. 1, you MAY be in for a rough ride ahead of you. But, I may have a solution for you, as well. I used a USB 2. 0 USB Hub. You can look online in any of the computer resellers for ‘USB Hub’ and find an inexpensive, four port, USB 2.

0 hub. It MUST be USB 2. 0, not 3. 0 When I plugged in the SSAG into the hub, Windows 8. 1 immediately found the camera, and PHD2 (the recommended guiding software) worked just fine. But, if I plugged the camera into the computer directly, it would not be recognized.

I can ONLY get the camera to work if I run it through a USB 2. 0 hub, at least on this computer running Windows 8/8. 1. I expect the same results in the upcoming Windows 10, as well. Why this works on some Win 8.

1 computers and not others is beyond me, but Orion needs to find someone who can write bulletproof code. It has taken me for what amounts to two weeks to get this to function reliably. I’m a hard head, and I want to make sure things work, but others who aren’t willing to put in the time and effort will be disappointed with this product if they can’t get it to work immediately Now, once I’ve got it where the computer sees and recognizes the camera, everything else is cake.

The 50mm Guide scope is wonderful, it accepts 1. 25″ accessories, so you can put in a standard 1. 25″ eyepiece, a diagonal, or whatever you need. The included brackets allow you to mount the guider on another telescope, or a dovetail bar, or other locations.

All in all, the product is very good, and would get five stars, EXCEPT for the software.

I mounted one of these on my Orion 10″ Newtonian OTA, and it guided the CG-5 mount perfectly. I was able to track exposures of over 10 minutes with absolutely perfect sub-zero precision. I often participate in public viewings with my astronomy club, so I just replace the camera with a 90 degree mirror tube and an eyepiece, then use the unit as a finderscope.

I also own an Orion Short-tube 80 and, because the Magnificent Autoguider mounts on a standard viewfinder mount, I use the Magnificent Mini to autoguide that as well. Finally, I sometimes need to autoguide my Newtonian, but using projection imaging, I need a longer focal length autoguiding setup.

So, I just mount my Short-tube 80 on the Newtonian’s rings, then put the camera from the Magnificent Mini on the Short-tube 80, and it works just fine. When I do this, which is quite often, I also mount a standard finderscope on the Short-tube 80, which makes things VERY easy.

The software CD that comes with this setup gave me no issues, though I did upgrade to the latest version online just because it was there. The unit also works great with “AstroPhotographyTools” (that’s the name – APT).

Solidly built, but fairly light weight. Standard sized parts, so it’s interchangeable with my other equipment, and versatile. Oh, one more thing. It comes with a little plate that you can use to tripod mount the little scope and use it as a “mini” telescope with an eyepiece (I use a 32mm).

I love it. THIS is why I buy from Orion. Everything just works like it is supposed to and is a great value for the price.

After purchasing the entire ATX and ATS lineup from 65mm to 95mm objectives and using them on a 10 day elk hunt as well as several other side by side comparisons. I came to the conclusion that I was going to keep the ATS 80 for tripod and vehicle window mounted applications.

I didn’t care about the price I wanted the best performing optic for my use. I found the ATX eye relief to be a tight window, if your eye isn’t positioned perfectly you loose field of view quickly. The ATS is more forgiving in that regard and it is lighter than the ATX.

Don’t get me wrong every Swaro scope is a magnificent piece of hardware but excluding the price as a factor I actually found the ATS to produce a sharper image at all magnifications. I actually disliked the highly regarded ATX 95mm objective.

At any magnification over 45x the image was blurry and I could not get is focused. I tried different eyepieces ATX STX and also glassed in early morning and late evening when the mirage effect is least and time and time again the other objectives outperformed.

Especially the 80mm ATS. Cabelas is my choice for purchasing these type of items because of the no hassle return policy. I had close to 20,000usd in optics and returned almost all of it to my own surprise.

I truly found the ATS 80mm to be my favorite. Also the Swaro Carbon Tripod and the DH101 head are smooth as silk. I would recommend these to anyone who actually uses their scope.

I bought this scope to bird watch on the recommendation of a professional bird guide. I was looking for optics that would be light, compact, provide a bright image, with resolution that would reveal fine feather detail.

This scope provides all of that and more. I first purchased the 65mm scope but returned it for the 80mm and am not sorry (an exchange that was easily accomplished through B&H). The 80mm is noticeably brighter and provides slightly higher resolution at the higher powers with minimal weight and bulk.

I have been impressed with both the brightness and the resolution of this scope. Because of the weather, I have used it to watch birds through a double-paned storm door. Even with that, I have been blown away by the fine feather detail I am able to see.

I look forward to the views I will get outside without the intervening window glass. The focus is smooth, convenient, easy to use, and is fast. The sunshade extends easily and yet is firm enough to stay in place.

The green rubber body armor seems durable and is attractive. The zoom eyepiece works smoothly. The tethered eyepiece cover is also a nice touch. Also, the angled viewing is convenient and comfortable.

The spotting device on the side of the scope makes it easy to find an object. In short, I would recommend this scope without reservation!.

Note: I only gave this product 4 stars because I have no benchmark to compare with — such as the best 15×50 monocular available (whatever it may be, if there IS one) — except a GoSky 15×50 that I also have.

Both seem to be much the same performance-wise. However, the Celestron’s digiscoping adapter is not very good (doesn’t adjust so it fits loosely around the monocular’s eyepiece vs. clamping-down on it) whereas the GoSky’s is better as it DOES adjust (tighten-down) onto the eyepiece.

I’d say the Celestron’s adapter is almost unusable. The Celestron seems to have a longer (finer) focusing range than the GoSky, which has a bit longer (coarser) focusing — but BOTH monocular do focus to achieve the same result: To see clearly, and I can’t tell any difference between the 2 brands re: image clarity — they’re both good.

Other than that, the Celestron is a good 15x monocular. I’d say if you want a decent 15×50 monocular and do NOT intend to use it with your cellphone to take pics, get the Celestron as it’s a little cheaper (but by only $10 maybe — not a huge deal-breaker savings).

If you DO want to be using a monocular with you phone to take pics, get the GoSky with its better adapter. OR, get a better/aftermarket disigscoping adapter to replace the one that comes with the Celestron.

This does not fit the smaller iPhone SE. Also, when using it with my larger iPhone SE, it is too cumbersome to get the phone aligned to see through the monocular. It is also disappointing that the monocular does not have a lanyard so that it can be easily carried to use when hiking, and the eyepiece cap is not tethered to the monocular so it will soon be lost.

The monocular itself is very nice with a focus knob that is convenient to use. I will likely keep it since I have to pay to return it and it is a nice monocular, but pretty worthless with the smartphone adapter.

Lightweight and easy to use. Did not try to use the smartphone adapter. Unfortunately this monocular does not come with a carry strap, nor does the pouch. The pouch can be attached to one’s hip by slipping a belt through a strap on the back of the pouch, but this means you need to have pants/shorts that have belt loops! Downgraded from 4 stars to 3 stars for this lack of flexibility.

Optically, this scope is incredible. The build quality is tops, and the view is amazing. Stars resolve to crisp pinpoints and imaging through it is a dream. The R&P focuser is just ok. Smooth action, very responsive, but there’s quite a bit of image shift when changing directions.

Makes focusing through a camera a bit of a challenge, because when you’re zoomed in to get a really detailed view the image jumps all over the place whenever you touch either of the focus knobs. That being said, I’ve got a lot of hours on it already and there are a lot more down the road for me – I just wish the focuser was a bit tighter.

The WO Zenithstar 73III is a fine optical instrument, that, I’m sure, would be put to amazing use by professionals. As a novice, I appreciate having a high-quality scope to start, as it makes the learning experience that much more enjoyable.

I took it out for my (and its) first light this weekend. I haven’t had time to process the images yet, but what I can see already is pretty amazing.

Nice wide field scope and of course it came in perfect condition two days early. Agenda is a great place to deal with.