BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="kabsetz" data-source="post: 3112649" data-attributes="member: 10167">James,This is a good question. I honestly have no idea what the folks at Canon are thinking when it comes to binoculars, but I can engage in some pointless, uninformed speculation.Firstly, the stabilization is such an excellent improvement on binocular viewing that when you have the know-how to incorporate it into your binoculars, making a premium model without it may seem nonsensical to them. Kind of like offering a telescope without a tripod foot.Secondly, these big Japanese companies seem to give very little weight to customer preferences in the west, and binoculars are a very marginal product line for Canon.Thirdly, they may just have been thinking that in due course, the birders and other binocular users would start to see the benefits and gravitate towards their IS models. Obviously, this has not been happening very fast at all.The funny thing is that if they would package these optics into a sleek more conventional-looking housing, they would have a binocular which would weigh about the same as the various SV's, HD's, SF's or Ultravids. Optically, it would be the equal of the very best, and ought to cost significantly less since the current IS model already costs less on most markets than the European "alphas" do.My guess is that such a model would both take sales away from N+Z+L+S, and would also bring more customers to try the IS L.Kimmo</blockquote>