Vixen Geoma II ED67-A Scope

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Review Highlights Compact, lightweight medium-sized spotting scope Bright optics, great field of view, excellent minimum close focus Multiple digiscoping configuration options available

Full Review

The Vixen Geoma II ED67-A spotting scope is a bit of a departure for us here at Optics4Birding, while simultaneously, it’s more of the same. The departure is that we’ve not reviewed any optics from Vixen Optics before, and we suspect the name will be new to most of our readers too. Vixen Optics is a Japanese company founded in 1949 as an astronomical telescope company. When they began making sports optics is unclear, but Vixen Optics now offers a fairly full line of binoculars and telescopes. One glance through the Geoma II ED67-A scope tells you they made the transition in focus just fine. What’s more of the same is a trend we’ve noted in the last year or so, which is that Extra-low Dispersion (“ED”) glass is becoming more common in binoculars and spotting scopes and it’s getting way cheaper. That’s great news for the consumer, because it means better optics at a lower price. The Vixen Geoma II ED scope line is a perfect example of this phenomenon. The Vixen Geoma II ED line is comprised of 6 spotting scopes with objective lens sizes of 52, 67 or 82 mm diameter, available in either straight or 45°-angled body configurations. What do we mean by a “low” price? Well, the Geoma II ED67-A sells for $759.00 for the body only, and when equipped with the GLH48T 16-48x zoom eyepiece, $239.00, so you’re getting a medium-sized, ED glass scope for just under $1000. The other thing you need to know is that this isn’t some cheap Cracker-Jack prize of an optic – the Geoma II ED67-A is a seriously high-quality scope. And it’s not just us – other folks think so too! In the Winter, 2008 issue of Living Bird Quarterly, a 30-reviewer panel ranked the Vixen Geoma II 67-mm scopes as best in the budget category, which they defined as under $1000.

Why Medium-sized?

The Geoma II ED67-A is a medium-sized scope, a distinction that is based on the objective lens size (between 60 and 70 mm) rather than length or weight. Why would one want a medium-sized scope over a larger model with its advantages in brightness? The main reason is portability. A medium-sized scope is generally smaller and lighter, and even though the dimensions on some larger scopes approach the compact size, the key issue is weight, which governs how small and light a tripod may safely be used. When you’re traveling, it’s the tripod that is more often limiting, not the scope. Weight also affects how easily the combination is carried in the field, and here, no full-sized scope-tripod pairing can match a medium-sized scope and correspondingly light tripod for comfort and ease. Today’s sports optics users are a demanding lot though, which means that they are unwilling to sacrifice performance for mere comfort. We are pleased to report that with the Geoma II ED67-A scope, no such sacrifice is necessary. Equipped with the 16-48x zoom eyepiece, the ED67A was the brightest and sharpest of the under $1000 scopes that we tested. There were medium-sized scopes that outperformed it, but they all cost considerably over $1000.

Size and Weight

After the discussion about dimensions, you might want to know what those are on the Vixen Geoma II. For some reason, scope manufacturers love to publish weight and size data that don’t include the eyepiece, which is sort of silly since scopes aren’t really usable in that state. So when you note that our statistics differ from the manufacturer’s brochures, that’s why! A Vixen Geoma II ED67-A with the GLH48T zoom eyepiece weighs 2.71 lbs, or 43.4 oz. That combination is about 15 inches long and roughly 5-6 inches high; the straight body type is less than 4 inches tall. The Geoma II ED67-A scope is a dark olive green color with black accents on the lens hood, focus knobs, tripod mount and eyepiece. The body has no armoring on it, though Vixen markets a padded “view-through” case for about $60. All Vixen Geoma II ED scopes are nitrogen-filled and completely waterproof. Like most angled spotting scopes, the entire Geoma II body rotates within a ring that attaches to the tripod mounting bracket. There are nice, firm detents at 45° and 90° off-vertical, the most commonly used positions other than straight-up, though the set-screw will fix the scope firmly in place at any angle and the scope can rotate a full 360°. There is a small hole in the chassis of the scope that serves as a sighting device to help line the scope up on the desired target. This actually works, unlike some sighting devices we’ve seen.

Eyepieces

Vixen makes a variety of eyepieces suitable for use on the Geoma II ED67-A scope. In addition to the GLH48T zoom eyepiece, there are many fixed magnification eyepieces, some of which are wide-angle as well. The eyepiece options are summarized in the table below; all data refer only to the Geoma II ED67-A scope. Those scope-eyepiece combinations with eye relief below 16 mm may not be comfortable for users who wear glasses.

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As we received only the GLH48T zoom eyepiece for evaluation, we cannot comment on the optical quality of the other eyepieces, except to say that the field of view offered by some of the wide angle eyepieces is fairly extraordinary while that of the zoom eyepiece is bigger than average. The eyepiece mount is a little different than usual in that the eyepiece fits into a mount on the body of the scope that has two full sets of threads. The zoom eyepiece has a freely-rotating aluminum ring that screws onto the larger of those sets of threads. When the eyepiece is only partially screwed into place, the entire eyepiece rotates freely within the aluminum ring, only becoming fixed in place when the ring is fully tightened. This arrangement, though secure, is somewhat slow in deployment; switching between eyepieces in the field could be rather slow and cumbersome. The GLH48T eyepiece has a nice soft rubber eyecup that rotates to extend. Though lacking detents to fix intermediate positions between fully in and out, the action is smooth and has enough resistance that intermediate positions don’t readily collapse, which reflects a pragmatic and usable design. Zoom operation is achieved by rotating the main body of the lens, and this action is smooth and easy. The resistance to turning means that a particular setting is not readily lost accidentally, which is good. Since the GLH48T eyepiece will fit either the 67- or 82-mm Geoma II scopes, Vixen printed a dual scale on the eyepiece tube to indicate the approximate magnification at that setting depending upon which scope model is in use, which is convenient to reviewers and users alike.

Focusing

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The bullet-shaped focusing mechanism of the Vixen Geoma II ED67-A features a two-part knob that is overall, a bit less than 1.5 inches long and just slightly less than 1 inch in diameter. The tapered outer knob is the fine focus, and it is really finely pitched, meaning that it takes a lot of turning to significantly alter the focal plane of the view. This allows for very precise focusing in the field. The inner knob is the coarse focus, which moves it rapidly through the entire focal range of the scope. Even the coarse focus knob is pitched fairly shallowly, with the result that it takes about 4.5 turns of the knob to go from minimum close focus to infinity. In terms of how this affects the user in the field, it means that the Vixen Geoma II scope is a bit slow to achieve sharp focus, so on rapidly moving targets, you will be at a disadvantage. The mechanism also takes a while to get used to. Had the knobs been slightly longer or perhaps separated by having different diameters, or physically separated in location as some other dual-focus mechanisms are, this would be easier to get used to. We found ourselves often using the wrong knob. Doubtless, this improves with greater familiarity with the instrument. Vixen lists the minimum close focus of the ED67-A scope and GLH48T eyepiece as 5 meters at 16x, or roughly 16 feet. This would be a perfectly acceptable minimum close focus on a medium-sized scope, but we are happy to report that we found it to be better than claimed, and had little difficulty achieving close focus on objects just 13 feet away. So the Geoma II 67-mm scope actually performs better than its specifications in this regard.

Digiscoping

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Vixen makes two styles of digiscoping adapters: the Vixen Digital Quick Attachment Bracket, a swing-arm style bracket, and the Digital Camera Adapter DG-FS Dx, which mounts around the eyepiece. Unfortunately, the DG-FS Dx does not work with the GLH48T zoom eyepiece, so we were unable to review it. Digital camera spotting scope brackets come in two varieties – large brackets that fit between the scope and the tripod and small ones that clamp around the eyepiece or the eyepiece mount. The Vixen Digital Quick Attachment Bracket ($100.00) is one of the small ones. Of the brackets we’ve tested, it fits the widest range of eyepiece diameters. It is simple to use and can be reconfigured so the camera can be mounted on either the left or right side of the eyepiece. The camera can be locked in either the viewing or shooting position. Our complaint about this style of brackets is that most lack the ability to position the camera in the proper alignment each time it is removed to change a battery or memory card. This can be solved by installing a Manfrotto 323 Rapid Connect Assembly ($41.00) on the swing arm. Then the camera can be removed from the swing arm without losing the proper camera location and alignment. Thanks to its versatility, the Vixen Digital Quick Attachment Bracket can be used on many other brands of scopes in addition to Vixen.

Lens Caps and Hood

The objective lens cap is a knurled hard plastic cap with a screw-on design. The disadvantage to screw-on designs is that the threads are often small so getting the right fit can require some fumbling. Fortunately, Vixen used a relatively steep pitch to their threads so this cap achieves a tight fit with relatively little twisting. And the advantage of screw-mounted caps is that they never dislodge even when bumping against things. The lens cap for the eyepiece is a soft plastic cap that fits snugly on the rubber eyecup of the lens so that it stays in place well while being easy to put on or remove. It actually works quite well. The rubberized lens hood deploys easily and smoothly and works very well. We give Vixen full marks for this. The tripod mount features two holes for mounting a standard diameter quick release plate screw. We would have appreciated an additional hole for an anti-twist post somewhere, but that is a minor point.

Conclusions

Overall, we were very pleased with the Vixen Geoma II ED67-A spotting scope and give it very high marks. The image quality is excellent. The size and weight make it comfortably portable and easy to travel with and it was without major ergonomic flaws to its design so that it was a pleasure to use. When you combine all these features with this low price, the performance of this little ED scope makes it a great value.

Vixen Geoma II ED67-A Scope - current price and availability