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upgrading binoculars to higher magnification? (1 Viewer)

I tried the full Canon IS set a couple of times with and without a vibrating platform they set up at a birding show. I suspect everyone has a different degree of tremor or harmonic according to their physical make-up and the weight and balance of the binocular as I mentioned earlier. With four out of the six I was surprised to find that I really saw no benefit at all with the IS activated. The 15x50 was the sweet spot in the range for me. Not completely damping my shake but a significant reduction.

I'm sure everyone else will have a different experience to the individual models and arrive at a different conclusion. There are plenty of devotees here, you just need to figure out what works for you.

David
 
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hi Torview,

I actually bought a small scope (nikon ED50) in august, along with a 20x eyepiece, I have used it with a small tripod and a small ball head,
The ED50 is very sharp and contrasty, the view is nothing but excellent, no doubt about that, but its a total of 2 kg extra weight, when hiking/biking thats a lot of weight/difficult, when birding with binos only, I feel more free, :)
Especially if birding is not the main activity for the day,

The ED50 is very happy with just a monopod to support it.
Collapsed, the monopod will also serve as a finnstick.
But if you need to stay lightweight, the ED50 can be hand held quite effectively. It is not comfortable for long scans, but for detail looks at specific targets it works wonderfully.
 
Vespo, David,

That finnstick photo was pretty amusing, but the concept is very good. Such a support does diminish shake a little bit, but by far the most important benefit is dramatic reduction in arm fatigue and therefore fatigue-induced tremor. With a stick like that, and your hands at around waist level, you can literally view for hours without lactic acid burning in your forearms. With the Canon 10x42, 15x50 and 18x50, there is a tripod thread under the body at more or less the balance point of the bino, so you can just screw on a light monopod and use it as a finnstick, without bothering with a head of any kind, saving both considerable weight and some money. I have a two-part aluminum monopod made of an old Culmann aluminum tripod leg I use for this purpose. It weighs 250 g with a plastic handle attached to the bottom end for additional holding comfort.

The effect of the stabilizer is pretty much what you see on the video linked in post #21. You can even hear the click of the stabilizer on it.

To David, I have once stood on the Canon demo shaking platform, and thought that it was the silliest contraption and totally beside the point of these binoculars. The IS system Canon uses is at its best when it only needs to remove the small tremors and shakes always present in the hands and arms of someone trying to stand still and view, like we binocular users do when we view. The more shake there is, the less well the IS works, which is why for uses such as viewing from a rocking boat or a pier, Fuji and Nikon stabilized binoculars work better. The Canon has a maximum compensation range of about 0.8 degrees, and furthermore, even within this movement range, the image is sharper and clearer if there is less shake to compensate for to begin with. So in some sense I think they are shooting themselves in the foot by having that demo platform at bird fairs. A much better demo would be to have you do a task such as reading a suitable text at distance or counting the number of birds in a photo showing a flock first with the IS off and then with it on. You can do that on the video with the flock of swimming geese, but they are a bit too close to make a good demo.

I need to add that I have used the Canon 10x42 and even the 15x50 quite a lot on a sailing boat (I do some racing as well as cruising), and when I really need to see something, such as lane markers, flags on a faraway committee boat or sail numbers of a distant competitor, even on a rolling sea the 10x42 IS L makes seeing these kinds of crucial detail possible at distances far greater than with a premium quality 7x50 marine binocular, and the IS makes most of this difference. But, under these kinds of conditions, the image is by no means stable and easy to view, only that there are enough moments of relative stability to make detail detection possible where otherwise it would not be.

Kimmo
 
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Kimmo,

The Canon representative couldn't tell me what the contraption was meant to represent but very little if any movement was transmitted to my hands anyway.

I imagine the frequency and amplitude of hand shake is just an individually variable phenomenon and the specific programming just doesn't work too well for me. Even with the 15x50 it appeared to cancel only specific oscillations not others. It obviously does work well for others.

David
 
. Hi Kimmo,
I agree with what you wrote above.
Over the last 10 or 12 years I've used the image stabilised Canon 8×25, 10×30, 12×36 Mark one, 12 x 36 Mark II, 15×50 and 18×50. Some of these extensively. I have not used the 15×45 or 10×42 L.
The only one that doesn't work well for me is the 8×25 where I can see almost as much with the stabiliser off.

If I can I get extra stability from anything I can to support my arms or hands.
Similarly elsewhere recently people have been discussing 16×56 binoculars. Again with non-stabilised binoculars like this you have to get as much extra support as you can to prevent fatigue and hand tremor.
for my kind of terrestrial and Astro observations extra support is nearly always available. Maybe for birdwatching this is not always the case.

It takes skill to use the Canon image stabilised binoculars to their best ability and it would help if somebody initially looks at the stars with them and sees how prismatic effects occur if you allow the vari prisms to reach their stops. Also lopsided stars. The trick is to keep within the central portion of the range if necessary unlocking the button centralising the objects and reapplying the button.

For me looking at say an airliner a few miles away at night the improvement is dramatic with the stabiliser on.
Similarly the moons of Jupiter especially very near the limb are better with the 18×50 image stabilised binoculars than any non-stabilised binocular handheld. This is even the case with the binocular totally unsupported except by one's hands.

It is clear that some people get a lot of benefit from image stabilised binoculars and some don't.
I definitely don't want to be encumbered by a tripod, monopod or anything else. But I will use fences, branches, window frames window cills or anything that is available.

For some observations which do not require critical resolution I quite happily use normal binoculars. But when I need real resolution it is the Canon IS binoculars that I use.
Besides these Canon IS I have use three competing systems and these are useful but when it comes to benefit, weight and cost effectiveness it is the Canon that I use.

I have noted over the years particularly with the 10×30 IS that Canon seem to have used slightly different variations of stabilisation some of which are better than others.
I think they claim that battery life was improved and I think it is also a cost initiative which has brought about the various changes.
With their cameras there have been quite extensive changes in stabilisation over the years.
Also they are more complex than a traditional binocular so there is more to go wrong and they may not be as tough as some traditional binoculars.

Slightly as an aside I would expect that the 50 mm ED Nikon spotting scope to easily be capable of taking a magnification of 100 times for viewing say Jupiter, Saturn or Mars. Even pushing it to 150 times the image should not break down.
In comparison, a top quality binocular of 50 mm aperture can only realistically be used up to say 50 times.
In other words the accuracy of the spotting scope optical surfaces is probably at least twice as good as employed in the best binoculars. With the longer focal length of the objectives in the spotting scopes this is I think why one gets significantly better images with the spotting scope say at 20 times.
 
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