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With no knowledge of your scope or finder scope, or the quality of your sky, I can only offer you this advice.
In my suburban backyard, star hopping with the finder scope (8x50) is fine as the brighter stars stand out in the finder and it's easy to navigate from there.
At a dark sky site however, it's a different story with the optical finder. When looking through the 8x50 there are so many more stars than seen with the naked eye and so many that look a similar magnitude and it is easy to get confused and lost. At a dark sky site I use a zero magnification red dot finder. With this I can look at the drighter stars with naked eye and line up the RDF. Using this method going backwards and forwards from the RDF and the eyepiece and sometimes even the 8x50, I find I can navigate easier than with the optical finder alone. Also use a good star map preferably down to the seventh magnitude and also use a planisphere.
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