Canon 14x32 IS binoculars

Tame your trembling arms to guarantee smooth views with Canon’s image-stabilising binoculars

Canon’s new range of image-stabiliser (IS) binoculars is the first to incorporate the lens-shift system that the company uses in its EF camera lenses. In theory, this should give an improvement over the previously used Vari-Angle Prism system of stabilisation, but does it deliver in practice? We tested Canon’s 14x32 IS binoculars to see how well the new system works on the night sky.

The binoculars come in a soft, well-padded Cordura case and have a 30mm-wide neck strap that we found to be very comfortable, even against a bare neck. There are no caps for the objective lenses but the dual eyepiece caps fit very well and are tethered to the neck strap by a short cord. There’s also a comprehensive instruction manual provided in PDF format on a USB memory stick.

The binoculars are covered with a matte rubber armour that provides a secure grip, even when the binoculars are dew-dampened (although they’re not waterproof), and offers some impact protection. There’s a rubber bumper around each objective lens to reduce the effects of front-end impacts.

The prism system is a Porro Type II, so you have to rotate the eyepiece turrets to adjust the interpupillary distance. They, and the right eyepiece dioptre adjustment, move smoothly, with enough resistance to ensure that they won’t accidentally slip once they’ve been set. The centre focus also has an action that’s light and smooth, with no perceptible backlash.

Lenses and light control

The eye-cups fold down to 3mm above the surface of the lenses, so only 11.5mm of the specified 14.5mm eye relief is available. As a consequence, we were unable to see the entire 4.3° field of view when wearing spectacles. But the focal range of the binoculars extends several dioptres ‘beyond’ infinity, so most people with any sort of vision impairment should be able to focus the binoculars and observe without spectacles. We found that the 2.3mm exit pupil is small enough to significantly reduce, but not completely eliminate, the effect of mild astigmatism.

When we shone a bright light into the objective lens there was only a tiny amount of light reflected from its surface and the components inside, which suggests that Canon’s proprietary Super-Spectra anti-reflective multi-coatings are effective. The binoculars’ control of stray light is excellent: there were no spurious ghost images when the lunar terminator was held near the edge of the field of

view. This control of glare also enabled us to resolve Jupiter’s Galilean satellites even when they were very close to the planet’s disc.

There’s a small amount of off-axis chromatic aberration on the Moon and Venus, but generally both colour correction and colour rendition are very good. Even with a gibbous Moon nearby, the different colours of the three brightest stars in Orion’s Meissa cluster (Lambda (h), Phi-1 ( 1) and Phi-2 ( 2) Orionis) were distinct.

Stabilising the view

We panned over to the double star Iota (f) Cancri (mags. +4.0 and +6.0, separation 30 arcseconds) and activated the image stabiliser. The stars immediately split into the two components and they remained separated until they were close to the edge of the field of view, testifying to the efficacy of the field-flattener lens-group.

The laws of optics limit the capability of the 32mm aperture and, although the Orion Nebula (M42) was not particularly bright, it showed some structure when the image stabiliser was activated. Where these binoculars really come into their own, however, is with open clusters and faint asterisms. For example, M35 in Gemini initially appeared as a few stars resolved against a background fuzz but, with the image stabiliser engaged, the fuzz became distinctly granular as more stars approached resolvability. When we activated the image stabiliser on the Pleiades or Kemble’s Cascade, not only did the image become still, but more stars became visible as we gained about a quarter of a magnitude in depth.

Incorporating the new image stabiliser system into these binoculars boosts their appeal and usefulness. It helps make the Canon 14x32 IS a great choice for observers looking for multipurpose small-aperture image-stabilised binoculars to complement their main observing equipment.