More thoughts on Canon 10x30 IS

Have been using it for a couple of days, I nearly get a view or two through it every day, despite the sky was cloudy sometimes.

1. I tried to look at high contrast objects against the white sky background, chromatic abberation is like my Pentax PCF III 10x50, maybe slightly less. For all other less demanding targets like the moon, chromatic abberation is minimal, better than my trusty Pentax.

2. Brightnes test: I really want to try to see when the 50mm aperture of the Pentax will help, but so far I failed. Maybe it's due to the fact that I didn't compare them at really dark places, in brighter places, our pupil never dilates to more than 3mm maybe, and that's why the bigger exit pupil of the Pentax does not help much. Believe it or not, I even get out a ruler to measure if the Canon is really 30mm!!! It's simply too bright to be 30mm actually.

3. Stabilizer test: I begin to enjoy the feeling to press that button, it feels like pressing the shutter of a camera, of course, it won't record an image, but the stabilization effect is simply superb! You immediately see more detail with it engaged. This button even helps when I support my elbow while looking, I suppose it's otherwise pretty stable, but that button still helps!

4. Stars: I didn't get a lot of chance to look at stars with it, but from the limited chances, I found that it really helps to dig out stars otherwise washed out by the air and light pollution from Hong Kong. No bad indeed.

6. Field of view: the added 10 degrees of apparent field of view is truely a nice place, it gives a stronger sense of being out there rather than looking through a telescope. It definitely helps to frame targets, and it's still not too wide that you need to roll your eye balls around.

7. Eye-relief: the eye relief is truely comfortable, without eye-glasses, I can see the whole field of view with the rubber eye cup, still have a little bit room to spare to avoid foggy the eyepieces. At the same time, when the eye cup is retrated, I can also see the whole field rather comfortably with my eye-glasses. Some occassional back out will be detected, but it's minor and not annoying at least for experienced telescope users.

More later.