Know What to Look for When you Buy a Scope or Sight for Your Paintball Marker

By Dave Goodin

You’ve moved into the sector to conduct recon for your Squad Commander. He wants to know movement and position of the opposing forces in that area, as well as gather information about any decent trails or ambush sites.

After settling in for the moment, you make sure you have good concealment, and that you’re not outlined from the front or rear. You raise your binoculars to your mask, and you can’t see a thing, because your binoculars don’t have any eye relief.

Does this sound familiar? Certain optics, such as binoculars, are just not compatible with woods paintball if they don’t have enough eye relief. Experience has shown that any type of optical device that requires your eyes to be in near direct contact to use, doesn’t translate well to the sport.

Eye relief is the most important factor when buying optics of any kind for paintball. What is eye relief you may ask? It’s the amount of distance between your eye and the rear or ocular lens of an optical device, such as a scope, red dot sight, monocular, or night vision device. The shorter the eye relief measurement, the closer the device has to be to your eye to be able to see the entire field of vision. When wearing a paintball mask, optics with short eye relief don’t work well.

Scopes
When buying a scope for your paintball gun, consider the magnification power and the diameter of the objective, or front lens. Magnification and objective lens diameter are typically described as follows: If a scope is labeled as being 2x20, the 2 represents the amount of magnification (in this case, a 2 power scope enlarges the object to twice the size of what you would see over the iron sights of your paintball gun), and the 20 represents the diameter of the objective lens (20 mm). The size of the objective lens also determines how much light is gathered by the scope.

When playing woodsball^™, a high-powered scope isn’t necessary, unless you’re using it for spotting purposes only. For targeting purposes, I wouldn’t recommend anything over a 3x lens, due to the limited ballistic capabilities and velocity of a paintball. Another thing to think about is that the higher the magnification, the less eye relief there is. Bigger objective lenses gather more light, which is good for cloudy days or playing in low light situations, but they also offer a bigger surface on your paintball gun to get hit. Any scope with a 20 to 40mm objective lens is good for paintball.

Another measurement that is associated with scopes is MOA, or Minute of Angle. MOA has to do with adjusting the elevation (adjusting the crosshair up or down) and windage (side to side adjustment of the crosshair) of the scope. MOA is used to ‘sight’ in your scope. MOA isn’t really a factor in paintball, as it refers to how much drop a projectile experiences over a 100-yard distance. Since 100 yards is an almost unreachable distance with a paintball gun, don’t make a very fine MOA adjustment a consideration when buying a scope.

Red Dot Sights
A red dot sight is somewhat like a scope, but usually doesn’t have magnification. Some are shaped like a very short scope, have ocular and objective lenses, windage and elevation adjustment, and have a light that projects a small dot on the inside of the objective lens. Generally, both lenses are the same size. Others have only one lens on the front, and the light is mounted on the rear of the sight plate. Most red dot sights are measured by the diameter of the lenses (i.e., 20mm, 30mm, 40mm).

Red dots are nice for quick target acquisition, and in my opinion, easier to use than standard iron sights. Red dot sights are adjusted just like a scope, with windage and elevation. Once you dial it in by setting the windage and elevation to the distance you want to be accurate at, all you have to do is put the dot on the target, and squeeze the trigger.

Laser Sights
Laser sights project a beam of light on to a target. However, in well-lit areas, their performance is nominal at best. In low-light situations, they work better, but they also allow your opponent to see you. Most commercial paintball fields will not allow them to be used, because they can damage eyesight if pointed directly at a person’s eyes for prolonged periods of time, and most field’s insurance won’t allow them.

There are also infrared laser sights. The naked human eye can’t see infrared laser lights, and you’d need night vision equipment to use them. Unfortunately, any of your opponents using NVGs can see them as well.