How important is an Adjustable Objective for a beginner's scope, assuming the parallax is set at 100yds?

For a beginner, NOTHING sophisticated is important.

What IS important is that you get out and shoot a few matches, talk with experienced competitors (who will probably let you 'try' their equipment) and that you watch and learn!
After you've done that for 2 or 3 months you'll know what works for you; and what doesn't.
(You won't develop any bad habits by shooting with a 4X scope and a 3 lb trigger. But you won't progress at all unless you come to the range and play the game.) IOW: 'Run whut ya brung!' is FAR more important -- especially for a rookie -- than worrying about equipment. lol

FWIW, parallax adjustment -- whether AO or side focus -- doesn't matter all that much if your position is good...until the scope power gets up enough to require it.

i'm with Ernie. I shot a 6x scope for two years never adjusting the parallax. Barely moved it when i shot a 10x. Not important for a beginning shooter.
dave

The importance would only be relevant if you couldn't focus it down to the chicken (short) line. Most non adj will handle the 100yd and out part OK, it's the short line that gets fuzzy. If you can see clearly down to say 20-30yds, and by clearly, can you SEE the edges with clarity. No Problemo!!
One of the good things about the old M8 24's (not the newer BRs) was that you can usually set parallax between 200-300 or so and shoot all day without adj again. One less thing to fiddle with.

For those of us who live above the national waistline, where winter occurs each year there is another consideration: indoor shooting.

In the winter lots of us silhouette shooters move to the 50' indoor ranges. A few non-AO scopes don't focus down to 50'. That said, most do but some still have parallax errors at that range. HOWEVER, most scopes work well enough. A typical fixed 4X or 3-9X is sufficient for a beginner on our indoor range.

Once our shooters begin shoot outdoors they're looking for a scope with finger adjustable turrets that don't require a coin.

Dave and Norm are correct, shoot first, then try someone elses gun/scope before you spend a dime. It's so easy to spend money and there's so much you can learn without spending much.

As an example of what can be done for low cost we are finding that and inexpensive Marlin 22 with a trigger job and a 3-9X scope are decent starting point for beginners. I've got six new shooters this year half are shooting Marlins and the other half are shooting hotrodded 10/22s.

Hope this helps.

dwl

While it's not neccessary, it's desirable.
Parallax at 60 Yd.s & under can throw you
off target if your 'meet` with the stock is
not consistant.
Irv
"Just about the time I mastered getting the toothpaste back into
the tube, they came up with this STRIPED stuff!"

Are you all meaning to say that there are parts of the country that DON'T have high 60 to low 70 degree temps in January???? I had heard that, but discounted the rumor cause surely no one would live like that.....

We held a match this morning and, since it was our monthly 'fun' match -- which includes an 'anything goes' practice period of about 2 hours -- I decided to experiment with parallax correction...or the lack of it.

Conditions were unusual for north Texas: Winds less than 10; high, thin overcast and temps in the 45

I started last year with an old Winchester 75 and Simmons 3-9X set at 6X which was more than enough at the time. I increased to 9X after a few matches and shot that combination for 3 months before starting to look at equipment that met my needs.

I learned from watching, asking questions, trying other's sugggestions and equipment, but mostly by participating and practicing.

Have a great time it's a great sport

Ken

I dunno Nomad.
My opinion was based on leaving the rifle on a rest
and moving the eye back & forth while watching the
cross hairs appear to move on the chicken.
They moved at least 1/2 a chicken.
This was with my old Simmons 4-16.
Not all of us can afford Leupolds.
Irv.

Irv,

What I did was certainly far from definitive. I took advantage of the fact that we had unusually good conditions, there was some spare time and I was curious. I'm the last to argue that trying to determine group size from splatter (on top of previous splatter) on steel targets is less than BR standard. (Also our range is within the DFW metroplex and it's heavily baffled. In addition there are high walls on each side, large berms and a clubhouse. With any wind, trying to shoot decent groups is hard here at best.)
But every target I shot at -- during my admittedly limited 'test' -- went down...

So:

A few of us are planning to put in some work time at the range on Wednesday and -- whatever the conditions -- I'll probably have time to shoot a bit on paper...either before we get started with the pick and shovel work or afterward. I'll use the same rifle and, with any parallax dialed out, shoot a group or two at 40m as a standard. Then I'll set the focus on the 100m setting and shoot a couple more groups at the same distance. I'll shoot a group or two with a normal position and then shoot another one or two while 'offsetting' around the ocular. I'll post the difference in group sizes and shapes afterward.

Given that no one is going to deliberately shoot a match with the kind of eye offset that we're talking about, it'll still tell us something about the need -- if there is any -- for concern.

Irv,

I got to do a little more serious testing today (on paper) and got a bit of a surprise -- but not enough that I'm going to change my thinking on this.

In some pretty nice conditions, I fired 2 5-shot groups at 40 with everything set up normally. The rifle pretty reliably delivers ragged holes at that range.

Setting the parallax to 100 and shooting with a normal position, I got 2 groups shading .5". (The big problem was finding the center of the VERY blurred target.)

Moving my eye to the extremes of the field gave me groups just about an inch and an 1/8th. (I had more horizontal POI shift than I did vertical -- that surprised me since, just checking visually, I didn't see it. They looked about equal.)

Given that anyone shooting with half the FOV blanked and the dot just hanging on the edge probably deserves to miss. And given that my groups shot with a seriously mis-set parallax focus and a centered-within-reason eye position were well within the chicken...and those shot with the deliberate misalignment were still solidly inside the edges And given that Imas' remark is absolutely right: "Paper doesn't lie!" I'm going to stay with my belief that anyone shooting 'normally' (IOW not deliberately TRYING to cause an out of group POI) has far more to worry about than parallax problems...unless he's shooting a scope with a lot more error than mine has.

Anyway, it was interesting. (I really didn't expect to get as much movement as I did.) What other experiments can we dream up? lol

Ernie

Good info.

Good info Ernie indeed...

I was taught about paralax on a 300 meter course with a BSA scope. The guy had me set the scope up to 300M... then we set up the bags and placed the rifle where we could see the 50M berm (Might have been vise -versa this was 7 years ago)... all I remimber is that w/o touching the rifle and looking through the scope, the crosshairs could be moved feet. Like you mentioned, we are talking of another animal all together. If the scope is set up on 100, I would bet $ that it wouold never cause a miss on the SB range! BTW> I do that very well on my own!

Chicken

Hey!

Sandy didn't marry me just for my dark, wavy hair and slim, sinewy body -- Im smert to yu kno!