For a long time I am thinking about acquiring an image stabilized binocular. There is in fact only one brand that comes to mind and that is Canon. And with a short vacation coming up where an image stabilized binocular could be used for eartly purposes, I once again went searching for reviews on the Internet. That is how I found the following article. The article is already dated but still worth reading. The first part of the article follows and below it a link to the original article for the remaining part.
Quote from the original article:
IMAGE STABILIZED BINOCULARS
By Silvio Jaconelli
It all started with me reading about quick-setup binocular mounts ranging from broom handles to parallelograms in order to steady up the images seen through conventional binoculars – the ‘shakes’! My binoculars of choice were Fujinon 7x50s - absolutely gorgeous images – and at 7 power, these were close to the ‘hand-held’ threshold of 10 power; many commentators have written that steady images are hard to get at higher than 10x without some sort of mount. And yes, even at 7 power I was getting the ‘shakes’. I have a camera tripod that I used as a mount, but the viewing angle was most uncomfortable, and it was a hassle to drag the mount out every time I wanted to do some serious binocular observing. Much more extreme were the Miayuchi 20x100 binoculars that I once had – it was mandatory to have these mounted, and the setup/take down hassle was almost as complicated as a small telescope. What was I to do …… ???
Well, I started to take notice of image-stabilized binoculars – they promised the ‘grab-and-go’ observing experience that I was looking for, so I started to read up on them. There was a very good review written in the July 2000 edition of ‘S&T’ which – along with everything else that I had been reading – gave high praise to the Canon models of image-stabilized binoculars. The closest that I came to a real live human being was an acquaintance of Bill Dellinges who had just purchased a pair and had told Bill that they were excellent binoculars. Peer pressure …..!! I finally succumbed, and I traded in my Fujinon 7x50s plus cash for the Canon 15x50s.
Read more in the original article.
While browsing on the Internet I found a very good review of the Canon series of Image Stabilized Binoculars. That review is certainly worth reading if you are thinking of buying one or want to decide which model is the best for your purposes.