Canon 15x50IS Binoculars

Author's Rating:

Pros: Sharp images; very good color correction; smooth and accurate focusing; water resistant.

Cons: Image stabilization very good, but not "perfect"; a bit pricey; slightly heavy.

The Bottom Line: 
I find these to be an excellent product. You won't be disappointed. Optics on par with more expensive binos and IS to boot.

Author's Review
Having owned or viewed through virtually every brand of binocular out there, I guess you could consider me somewhat of a binogeek. I purchased the Canons primarily for astronomy, but find them great for terrestrial use as well.

First off, image stabilization aside, the optics of this product are excellent. I'd place them just shy of Zeiss or Swarovski. Edge sharpness and brightness are very good (particularly for a 3.3mm exit pupil). I have seen some reviews which fault them for inadequate eye relief for eye glass wearers, but I have not found this to be a problem. As long as your glasses don't sit too far out from your face and you carefully adjust the interpupilary distance, you should get a full field of view. Color correction is very good to excellent and the focusing is smooth and precise. They are a bit heavier than some may be used too, but not excessively so. Tripod mountable.

Now as to the image stabilization - It doesn't remove all motion, just the jittery movement, and this it does quite well. I've owned the Canon 10x30IS binoculars and they were somewhat better in this regard. But remember, this is 15x vs. 10x and given they both employ the same IS system, this is to be expected, I think. The image isn't completely still but moves slowly and smoothly vs. jerking around randomly. Secondly, there is a slight but still noticeable shift of sharpness if you move the binoculars while the image stabilization is on... Probably some astigmatism introduced if the prisms have to move too much to compensate for motion. However, in every case I've noted, it is more than outweighed by the increased resolution gained by the image not jittering around wildly. For those using them for astronomy, there is some flaring of planets when using the IS, but not with point sources such as stars.

Overall, I'm very happy.