Canon 10x30 IS vs. Swarovski EL's

[slickh]

Hired Gun, My Canon 10X32 should be here Fri. or Sat. I let you know.

[Sam11]

Hired Gun: I have both. Hands down you cannot beat the glass in the EL's. They are just great. I did a bunch of searching in some birding forums before I got the Canon IS to see what they said about them. The image stab. really works and it is amazing the detail you can see when you eliminate even the smallest amount of shake. From what I researched the 10x30's were the ones to get vs. the other models unless you needed high power. Their recommendations were right on. For me these are an extra advantage when you are trying to glass something when you are not in a comfortable viewing position such as twisting far around to one side or another. It is hard to hold anything steady in those positions. Even using them to look at targets it is just amazing how much more detail you can see when you push the IS button. The way you operate them is they are just regular binocs until you push and hold the IS button located just forward of the focus button. The IS button is easy to push and hold. That is the only time it is using the IS. Battery life is supposed to be approx. two hours but I haven't had mine long enough to tell you about battery life. I use the IS for a portion of a minute here and there and very rarely use it for long periods. Most places you buy these from have a return policy so you could try them out for a few days and ship them back. I have a feeling you wouldn't send them back, I didn't. There is a $50 factory rebate on them now. Hope this helps, Sam.

[Hired Gun]

Thanks,
I went ahead and ordered them. My local dealer closed up for the holidays so I did a search on nextag.com and ordered them from PC nation with free 3 day frieght for 323.80. Mine will be here Wednesday. We still have a spike tag to fill in December. I can hardly wait to use them in actual field conditions. For now I'n going to try to use them for spotting hit and misses on steel gongs. With regular binoculars if you are right by the shooter I flinch from the report and almost can never catch the misses. It will be interesting to see if this works because if it does it should work on game shooting. Right now we set up a spotting scope well behind the shooter to spot and that works very well. Maybey SlickH will bring his out today for a try.

I still need to pick up a Swarovski range finder and then I can start saving up for the EL's. I believe they are a must have.

[Hired Gun]

I received my Canon's from PC Nation on 11/27/2006 before noon. I ordered them Friday with free 3 day frieght and got them on Monday. Lightning fast service works for me.

They work perfect. Low light performance in well beyond my expectations for a 10x30 set of glasses. I can see things in the dark well beyond when they disapeared from my naked eyes. The color reproduction is very good and the stabilization still allows me to see things in fine detail the Swarovski EL's refuse to give up when hand held. Lesser glasses need not apply.