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Binoculars of Note

From Bird Watcher's Digest, November, 2007
Midpriced Binocular Round Up

by Michael and Diane Porter

These are among the binoculars of note from the 2007 Midpriced Binoculars Round Up.

Canon Image Stabilizer

Canon 12x36 ISCanon brings to binoculars the same shake-canceling technology that revolutionized telephoto camera lenses. Push a button near the central focus knob, and your hand-shake goes away. The image floats instead of jumps, and details that were blurred by motion come back into view. Pure magic.

They have a smooth-turning, well-placed focus knob, surprisingly good eye-relief, and excellent optics. They require two AA batteries for their stabilization to function, but you can still see through them even with dead batteries — just not stabilized.

Neither of the two mid-priced Canons we tested was waterproof, but a higher priced 10x42 model is. Weighing in at 31.4 oz. (without batteries), the 12x36 Canon IS is among the heaviest of the binoculars we studied.

Their odd shape makes them stand out from rest of roof-prism crowd, and this fact may have skewed their overall quality score downward more than they deserved.

You set the interpupillary distance by rotating the offset eyepieces. The eyecups are the old-fashioned, fold-down rubber design, which also lost them points. And we're not sure how their high-tech innards would hold up to the heavy usage birders would give them, or how well they would maintain their alignment after a fall.

However the Canon IS binoculars can do something that no other binoculars can — let a person hand-hold a 12-power binocular. They are the Shrek of binoculars-big, green, and funny looking but with remarkable and quite useful powers.

Other Binoculars of Note

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Bird Watcher's DigestThis article appears as part of the Midpriced Binoculars Round Up in the November, 2007, issue of Bird Watcher's Digest.

Text and photos copyright 2007 by Michael and Diane Porter.

 

 


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