6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
Wonderful product I ever saw! But...
Date of Review: Jan 5, 2006
The Bottom Line: Highly recommend this product to astronomical amateurs, wilderness hikers, and landscape tourists.
I just got this Canon IS 18X50. I have been waiting for it for a long time. I cannot believe I eventually got my dream product! I tried it in a retailer store and finally made my decision to buy it. It costs a fortune, man!!!! Very expensive but excellent! The only disappointment to me is when I was using it at night, I found the image is kind of dark and dim. I had experience of using a Bushnell Roof Prism 12X50 at days and nights, whose image is much more brighter than this Canon IS 18X50. I guess it may be due to the high power of Canon IS 18X50, which makes the exit pupil much lower than that of low-power binoculars. I saw someone claimed that he or she was able to see the Andromeda galaxy using this Canon IS 18X50. I am not sure if this is true because I've not got a sunny night to look into the space using this wonderful binocular. I will try it myself when sunny nights are coming.
The funny thing is: when I came home with this expensive binocular, I found a scratch on one of the two objective lenses! It almost broke my heart to pieces! You can image how extremely upset I was when I found a scratch on the most critical component of this expensive product! I tried a couple of times to wipe it off with a specially made lens cloth which I bought at the same time with this Canon IS 18X50, but that scratch just persists! My heart was broken, my eyes popped up, and I could feel blood rushing to my head! I tried the third time, it works! (It is actually not a scratch, just a tough trace of dirt) Oh Boy! It scared me to heck!
I took a suggestion here, yes, I also bought a couple of objective lens filters to protect the expensive objective lens of this binocular. I was actually interested to find a pair of rubber caps, but the sale representative told me he could not find such two rubber caps for me. So I had to buy two lens filters, which come a bit expensive, too. Comparing to the original Canon objective lens, it is a must to buy lens filters. I recommend you to do this for your good.
I will see further how it brings pleasure to me. Definitely, the first thing to see is the meteorite craters on the moon.
Have a good day.
Meijer
