The 10x42 L Canons will accept a 52mm UV filter. They are about $5 each. I use those on mine for protection.
I am still laughing at the "buy the Canons if you are color blind and can't tell the difference." It is a classic example of how far people will go to justify a $3000 purchase of an inferior product.
In my mind - IS make ALL other binoculars obsolete for handheld use.
Yes, the blind leading the blind. What's "funny" is we can all accept the fact that people can't sing. One of the biggest reasons for that is hearing. If you don't hear correctly, you can't sing correctly. Lots can be done about that. It's not so easy to change someone's acuity.
The argument is similar between light intensified night vision and thermal imaging. One has superior detail, the other has poor detail but superior contrast. If you had the choice between top of the line light amplification or top of the line thermal imaging, which would you pick?
The contrast makers don't market that way because people get butt hurt that they can't see everything. Makes people mad, so they stick to "sharp", "bright" when in reality what makes them different is contrast.
I've agreed the Canon's are as bright and sharp as they come for image stabilized binoculars. They just don't have great contrast which is really really important for certain applications.
I'll tell you my epiphany. My very first pair of decent binoculars were the Canon 15x45 IS purchased from a camera shop in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1998. I paid $1,250 for them plus tax. The camera shop was near Eastern and Sahara and that's where you bought high end binoculars in 1998. There was no eCommerce, eBay was only 3 years old. I can't remember how I happened to want them but I remember calling Canon to see who had them and they directed me there.
So I come back to Arizona, yeah, I drove to Las Vegas to get them and I was happy 'cause I was going to get to use them on my very first javelina hunt. Woo hoo! These babies were fantastic! So me and a buddy are down in the Rincon Valley spotting the north side of a hill about 600 to 800 yards away and he's got his 10x40 T* Zeiss roof prisms (they weren't phase coated) and I've got my new 15x Canons. So we're looking and he spots some pigs and directs me to their location and I can't see them. There they are just sitting on the hillside and I can't see them. We switch binoculars and, wow!, there they are. How is this possible? How can we see the javelina in the 10x old Zeiss and not these new 15x high dollar Canons. The answer, contrast. The pigs looked like every other grey bush with the Canons but they were nice brown pigs in the Zeiss. And this has not changed. It has not changed because when you're friends with an Outfitter who also owns a high end sporting goods store, you get to look through everything.
Thank God for eBay. Back in 1998, I was the only high end pair of binoculars on that sight. I listed them for $1,300 and to my amazement someone actually bid and sent a cashier's check to me. There was no other way I could have got my money back out of them back then. Took the money and paid $1,000 for a pair of Zeiss T*P* from a camera shop on Camelback Road in Phoenix.
To this day if you offered me a decent pair of Zeiss Classics 10x40 T*P* (Cabelas bought the entire last supply of them and blew them out at $799 many many years ago, $699 with $100 off coupon) over any of the Canon IS, I'd still take the Zeiss, not even a contest. Yeah, the ELs are much better than the old Zeiss but they are the best and that's just the way it is.
The Japanese stopped with contrast with the Nikon Superior E porro prism binoculars. The Nikon Venturers are ok but still not as good as the old Zeiss classics.