All 14 binoculars tested for this year’s recent reviews (published August and November 2006) carried a magnification factor of 7x50. Why? Because 7x has proven to be the maximum practical magnification usable aboard a small boat. Any higher magnification and boat movement combined with hand jitters make the image unusable.

So what’s the fix for getting a sharp image from high-magnification binoculars, like 10x, 12x, or even 16x, in the rock-and-roll environment of a boat at sea? Image stabilization (IS), a broad term for any technology that takes the shake out of an image. …