I've had a Sprinter 250M for almost 4 years now, and it typically only started having issues reading the rod at 200-250+ feet, even though it's rated for 100m/330ft. The other day, I kept having to switch to manual reading after trying to shoot the barcode at around 100ft. I was reading around the 2ft mark on the rod and at first I didn't raise the rod, so it was at around 4ft length. After raising the rod 1 extra segment to 8ft I could get a little more distance, but it still wouldn't read the barcode past 125ft or so.
The lens appears clean, the rod was in focus, and it was a sunny day with no shadows on the rod. My instrument and tripod were stable, as was the level rod. I'm at a loss for what the issue could be. I suppose I could have tried raising the rod to 12ft, but I never needed to do that in the past when reading at the 2ft mark. Maybe trying to read at 2ft is just too low? I swear I've gone longer distances reading lower than that, but it's been a while, so my memory is fuzzy. Any thoughts on what the issue might have been?