5 reasons to get image-stabilized binoculars

December 17, 2011 at 3:03 pm

posted by Peter McMahon

Five years ago, when I really started exploring the night sky from Canada’s wild spaces, I started looking for the ultimate portable telescope. What I found wasn’t a telescope but two telescopes (really small ones at least) enhanced with the same gyroscope or electronic-optic-steadying technology used in camera optics.

Even smaller models (smaller than the typical seven-power, 50 mm aperture 7×50 binoculars) like 10×30s and 12×36s made jarring, confusing messes of stars stand still and dazzle as if the binoculars were mounted on a tripod. I could even give one arm a rest and hold these image-steading binocs in one hand!

Over the past decade, such binoculars have revolutionized birding, sporting-event-viewing, low-power astronomy and other hobbies. Here’re five reasons to pick up a pair if you havent already:

5. They may keep you from getting dizzy

If you often start to feel nautius when looking at jiggly views through binoculars, you’ll likely appreciate a welcome respite from this once hitting the IS switch or buttons on stabilized binoculars. If nothing else, such devices make binocular viewing less queazy for some.

4. You’ll fall in love (perhaps ‘all over again’) with binoculars

Remember those radical binoculars Luke Skywalker used to search for R2D2 on Tatooine in the first Star Wars movie? Using image stabilized binoculars are sort of like getting to use those funky space specs: How they let you see actually makes you yearn to find things to explore in binoculars.

3. You can spot fine details you won’t usually be able to see

Users and reviewers of image stabilized binoculars frequently report being able to read licence plates on moving cars at the limit of what a similarly-magnified device on a tripod would normally be able to do so while the device and car are stationary. Birders, for example, appreciate being able to capitalize on higher-magnification without anyoing giggles that would usually negate any benefits from that higher magnification.

2. Great quality optics

Generally, image-stabilized binoculars sport tremendous-quality glass and coatings. Birders will appreciate the fine-detail at high power and sporting events take on a sense of being down on the field. Nothing pushes optics to the absolutel limit like astronomical observation and this is where the optical quality of such binocs really shines. What’s more, the steady images in IS binocs actually let you notice and appreciate this optical quality even more.

1. The world’s most portable ‘telescopes’

My personal-favourite aspect of image-stabilized binoculars is that the view is more-or-less equivalent to a small telescope (or medium/large binocs) mounted on a tripod. Yet if you’re hiking or paddling to a wilderness destination, you don’t have to take along that bulky tripod. (In-fact, 25 and 30 mm models fit semi-comfortably in the pocket of a pair of cargo pants.)

Sizing them up…

While Bushnell, Fujinon, and others make excellent image-stabilized binoculars, my favourite (and best suited by far for stargazing) are Canon’s IS line, which also ranks among the largest range of sizes, from the light-eating high-magnification 18×50s to the compact bargain 10×30s or 12×36 IIs – cited by many reviewers as a “best value”.

“Canon’s 10×42s may be the finest binoculars available for astronomy” writes Canadian astronomy magazine writer/editor and lunar atlas author Gary Seronik.

No matter what size or brand you go with, owning a pair of image stabilized binoculars is more than fanciful observing treat. More and more (and as prices continue to come down), these amazing devices seem like the way binocular viewing was meant to me.

More image-stabilized binoculars:

Compact (suitable for birdwatching, sporting events, and limited astronomical views): 8×25, 10×30, 12×36,

Medium/Large (suitable for birdwatching, sporting events, and astronomical views): 10×42, 15×50, 18×50

Sky News magazine contributing editor Peter McMahon has been using image-stabilized binoculars under wilderness skies in Canada for the past five years