i got the 3-12 by 44 swat,about two years ago now.and its on for its second springer,at first i was a bit wary as the zoom/magnification seemed a mile out, the scope was fine but like i said i noticed something odd, i look around my shoot with either a spotting scope , or binos which are ten times, then using the rifle scope on ten times noticed the mag was greater than my binos, so zooming out with the scope until it matched the image in the binos ,i got the scope to six times before i got a match,so the scope gives a real mag of 5-16/plus this is,nt a problem and can only make the parallax more sensitive, so its no bad thing,for range finding,another thing to remember is to set the paralax for every different range you shoot at,even if its a difference of five meters because the parralax works that well you can be a fair bit out by not adjusting the side wheel. i missed lots of shots until i started using the side wheel, i used to leave it set on fifty yards, big mistake, theres two inches movement either side of the cross hair, vertical and horizontal at 30 yards