I have both the 18-140 and the 18-300. The 18-140 is my goto lens. Fantastic lens. I only use the 18-300 when i need longer reach, which is pretty rare.

The 18-140 is light, short, and very sharp at all focal lengths.

I can't say as I disagree.

I took the picture below when I was visiting a little town in northern France, just before Christmas on a business trip. We had been working cooped up in offices, hotel rooms and factories for the last several days and a colleague and I decided to take a walk after dinner and see where we were. An amazing place it was. I had on hand my trusty-rusty Nikon D5200 with my "travel lens," the AF-S DX 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR lens. I like this lens a lot when I travel and do not want to bring my gadget bag. It's not as big and as heavy as my 18-300 lens, yet for me, it has done a great job. I also carry my 35mm f/1.8 prime in my pocket.

I let the D5200 do its thing and took a whole host of pictures that evening and then we returned to the hotel, then work, then finally home. When I saw the pictures on my 4K 55 inch monitor, I was blown away.

Here is the one I like most. The specs are as follows: f/4, 1/30sec, ISO 2200, Focal length 27mm (40mm 35 equivalent), no flash.

This picture is unretouched from the camera. I've played with it some in PS, but I just can't seem to make it better than the original. If someone wants to try, please feel free, but the picture remains my IP.

I purposefully included the yield sign on the right and the lightpost on the left, sort of like framing the picture itself, showing that it's not a fairyland image. The entire street flows down on the right, towards the sea; it was difficult to try and keep level. I almost succeeded. It was 11:15PM when I took the picture.

(Download)

So, let me guess this straight. [sarc]You compared the results from a 36MP FF sensor to that of a 21MP DX sensor and you say the one from the 36MP sensor has more details?

What. A. Shock.

I am so surprised, I never would have thought more pixels would have more details. I never saw that one coming. [/sarc]

Absolutely. The scopes on my match rifles are 1/8MOA, but the rifle I use for 1000yard is only ever used at that distance so, I leave it zeroed at that distance. Of course, temperature affects the trajectory and I have to adjust for the temperature of that day. So funny, last Sunday, my very first shot of the day was a miss. I never miss the target at 1000 yards so that was a shock. Then I remembered that the match prior to that had been fired in 30 degree weather and I had to come up 2.75 MOA from my usual zero. I had neglected to remove that elevation and so my first shot went above the target board. I dialed out the required MOAs and the next shot was a 9 at 1 o'clock. Everything was right with the universe after all. It's the silly things in life...

The apex of the trajectory on these bullets is about 11 feet at 650yards downrange. The reason it's more exaggerated is because of the perspective, but then again catching a trace is not easy, you have to know what to look for and how to do it.

Yes, people keep telling you that bullets do not rise when they leave the barrel. In fact they do since the barrel will be pointing up a little bit, or else the flight would be very short indeed. To give you an idea however, the angle of the barrel compared to the line of sight is about 31MOAs for the 1000 yard flight with these bullets. An MOA is a minute of angle; so 31MOA is right at half a degree of elevation.

Here is the HD mp4. Let me set it up for you. You are going to see 5 examples of bullet traces picked up by the digiscoping setup discussed earlier. This is my very first attempt at this capture. so bear with me.

This was taken early yesterday afternoon at a rifle range about 25 miles south of Houston, at the end of the last relay of the day. I had finished shooting in the prior relay and put all my equipment away. The last relay was delayed due to rain and the weather was just very nice after the rain had finished. As the relay was starting, I decided to try out my digiscoping equipment. I setup my Kowa TSN-82SV with the 20-60X eyepiece on my Manfrotto carbon fiber tripod with Manfrotto Pistol grip head and attached my old Nikon D5200 to the Kowa using the Kowa adapter.

Next I setup the tripod to be about 4.5 feet high so that the rear screen of the attached D5200 would be easy for me to see and also not have the scope too high so I would not lose the trace. The tripod was behind the prone shooter and a little to the right to provide some perspective to the trace. The first trace is taken at 30X, the subsequent 4 are taken at 20X.

The target line that you see is 1000 yards away. The target frames are 6 feet by 6 feet. The aiming black is 44 inches in diameter. The concentric rings in the black start at 5 inches in diameter for the X-ring, 10 inches for the 10-ring, 20 inches for the 9-ring, 30 inches for the 8-ring and 44 inches for the 7-ring. In the white, the 6-ring (the only ring in the white) is 60 inches in diameter. The rest of the target, outside that ring, scores as a 5. The shot marker (the little white thing you see on the targets, is 3 inches in diameter. The black dot on the periphery of the target indicates the value of the shot marked by the white spotter. At 3 o'clock, it's an X or a 6 (which you can figure out by seeing where the spotter is.) At 5 o'clock, it's a 10 or a 5. At 6 o'clock, it's a 9. At 7 o'clock it's an 8 and at 9 o'clock, it's a seven.

The bullet takes about 1.5 seconds to get to the 1000 yard target but the trace is only about 1 second long, because it's picked up several hundred yards downrange.

The target in question here is number 8. Because I am positioned slightly right of the shooter, the bullet will appear at the bottom left, coming up in diagonal on the big number 5. When the target puller sees the bullet splash in the impact berm, he or she pulls the target down, scores it and runs it back up.

Attached file:
(Download)

I have succeeded in creating a 20 second video that shows 5 bullet traces. I've got in in an mp4 format with a size of 3MB.

Now I have to figure out how to upload it here.

I was never able to take a video of a bullet trace. You need a good spotting scope to do that, set at 20X or more and you have to be positioned properly relative to the shooter and you have to know what to look for. I'll work on that video and see what I can come up with. I've never edited video before so there will be a learning curve.

I was at the 1000 yard match today, and there wasn't much mirage. It only showed up for a couple relays and I did not have a chance to get a video of, as I had to help officiate the match as well as shoot it. At the end of the match we had a sudden rain downpour that slowed us down and I was able to finish my string before the ceasefire. When the match resumed, I was already finished so I decided to try to get some trace with the digiscope setup. I even dropped my 5200 from 8 feet onto the grass, but it was fine; they do say the Nikons are built like tanks and I agree.

I was able to catch some neat video of bullet trace to 1000 yards, in HD no less. The setup works really well. The one .mov file is 420MB so I have to figure out a way to play with this file to shot the examples on the trace. My laptop came with Adobe Premiere Elements 11, which seems to have a Video Editor. I guess I'll learn to use that.

That is so funny. Using a gunsight to find a target for your spotting scope! There are any number of holographic sights that will work for this. Just get a bracket and a piece of Picatinny rail (look for that at any firearm-related site,) and you can mount any of the holosights easily. Good idea. I have a bracket from my old Nikon Coolpix 990 and Picatinny rails. (PS, make sure the Picatinny rail you get is not a 20 or 30MOA canted rail.)

Now to pick up a cheap RDS or Holosight.

Yeah, I knew going in that it was pretty near impossible, but I had to try it. I lined up as best I could in front of it and just could not get the bead on it. Well, it's not what I got all this stuff for anyways, that first test comes up next Sunday and the February 1000 yard match. I have to play with the video aspect some more before the match.

Thanks for the info, Dave. I'll look into it when I return from a quick business trip. (Sigh.)

Bob, yes, these spotting scopes, like the riflescopes we use do not have adjustable apertures. It would be nice if I could tell the 5200 what the aperture is, but I cant.

We do have some folks who use a ring in front of their riflescope to reduce the amount of light coming in and by the same token extend the depth of field and the mirage. (I'm not sure it does anything for contrast.) I like my depth of field as small as possible on the riflescope to minimize the mirage, but for my spotting scope, the way I reduce the light coming in is with either an ND filter or a polarizing filter. I've also played with a yellow filter to highlight the mirage.

Now that I can record the mirage through my spotting scope, the tests of these devices will continue and become more "scientific."

As a note. I saw the ISS streak by the night sky last night. I tried, in vain, to get a picture of it through my setup. There is just no way; that object moves way too fast and the head on my Manfrotto is definitely not the type that lends itself for tracking. It appeared at the exact time the site indicated. By the time it cleared the trees it was 50-55 degrees up and streaked by above us. Then two minutes later it got into the other trees and then gone. This lasted all of 4 minutes. Impressive.

I wonder if a D500 would allow me more flexibility with this setup.

I didn't find a menu where I could set non-CPU lens. I have a list of the f-stop values for the different magnifications but nowhere to enter that.

Yes, Live View does react to the change in ISO and shutter speed with this contraption. As I said earlier, it shows a meter after the shot has been taken and I can make a final adjustment and take the shot again.

It's working really well, but at high mag, I'm boosting that ISO to 6400.