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I have the 15X50 IS ones.
They are fun - they give an excellent view of the moon when it's going through eclipse at whatever angle it is in the sky. Which is mainly what I've used them for.
So, I don't use them that much. For looking at deep sky objects, I prefer hand holding with my 15X70s or 16X70s or 18X80s - yes the image shakes a bit, but the objects and stars are brighter. When we used to go travelling around Europe, my wife and I would most often prefer to use my 15X70s when looking at scenery, birds, vistas. distant towns etc, despite often having had 10X50s or 8X25s handy.
I never saw any reason to take my 15X50IS ones overseas, mainly because my ones have very short eye relief, and I have to push the rubber eyecaps back every time I use them. Which I find rather annoying - since it means one can't use eyeglasses with my pair, which makes them very annoying for my wife.
Also, image shakiness doesn't seem to us to be much of a problem during daylight hours, compared to using binoculars on stars. I had a pair of 16X60 Pentax ones that I didn't like using at night (narrow field and shakiness), but which my wife found great for birding hand-held during the day.
To sum up, if one doesn't have much of a problem hand holding 15X70s at night when looking at DSOs - then there isn't any real need to get the image stabilised ones - though they would be nice to have. But plainly there are people around who have a hard time hand-holding even 10X50 binoculars, and for them image stabilised binoculars would be marvellous.
Regards,
Renato
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