I can’t help thinking that if an alpha maker with the budget and patience to do it in a less clunky way were to introduce IS as an everyday aspect of one of their binocular lines, the response would be overwhelming, and the world would never be the same.
I say this simply because no one who’s used IS binoculars fails to have a ‘Mother Of God! Why Don’t All Binoculars Work This Way?’ moment, exactly analogous to the way Steve Jobs felt when first seeing the graphical user interface at Xerox PARC.
Because of that, I honestly think it’s inevitable that all binoculars *will* work that way someday. I’m just trying to discern the path to getting there. The tail-bitingly timid refinements, amazing margins, and lack of platform innovation by the alpha makers, who alone have the cash and clout to lead this market someplace new, make them seem more like a blockage than leaders in getting there.
I would guess the current situation suits them well. But we’ve had 50 years without any huge qualitative disruptions. It’s not because sport optics are unimprovable. It’s because it’s arguably gotten to be more like wine-tasting, with considerable passion expended on qualities that you can assert, with perfect plausibility, are perceptible to you but not to another user. While real change is unmistakable.
Sometimes I worry we’ve drifted into becoming like stereophiles before the CD, pooh-poohing the very notion of improvement. There were reasons to prefer vinyl, but accurate sound reproduction wasn’t one of them.
I guess I feel strongly about this! Please forgive my going on. I just can’t think of many endeavors that are inherently more important than helping people see their own world more clearly, and I wish this market were dreaming even more determinedly about how to do that.