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Binocular camera? (1 Viewer)

marcus

Well-known member
Considering the small amount of birding that I'm able to do, I'm thinking about getting one of those inexpensive 8x20 binoculars with a digital cameral attached. What do you guys think? Will the shots that I'm able to get out of one those be good enough to send to this forum?
marcus
 
Marcus,I have given these items serious thought.But when you think how much do good bins cost,ditto for scope and again for decent camera,and then you see the price of the camera/bins combined,between£100 and £250 pounds what are you going to get for your money.also,holding binoculars steady to view is not always easy,you definitely need two hands most of the time,so how can one hold steady enough to take a decent pic.when birds are moving and swimming etc,one has all on to keep everything in focus,so i would think that holding binoculars aloft,and pressing camera buttons and keeping everything still would be virtually impossible.But if anyone has tried and had any success with these products ,it would be interesting to hear.
Christine.
 
I've been very intrigued with these things, too.

BUT -- I'm wondering if they aren't one of those things that either improve as time passes, or will fall off the market because they aren't really worth the money.

I certainly don't know the answer, but if it were me, I'd wait a while. Let some other folks give 'em the try out.

As with all optics, you DO get what you pay for.
 
The idea is good, Marcus, and Pentax know a thing or two about optics on a budget. Their digibins are small, reasonably priced, and probably give you a surprisingly good picture.

Unfortunately, they made an unforgivably stupid design decision: the digibins don't take Compact Flash or any other type of removable, compatible storage: they have inbuilt RAM, and a miserable 16MB of it is all you get. Non-upgradable, and hence darn near useless. 16MB is nothing. Even at the relatively low resolution (and thus high storage efficiency) of the Pentax digibins, it's enough to take some pictures of one bird if you are lucky. Heck - I take three 512MB flash cards with me for a day's birding and sometimes fill them up - which is greedy, I grant you, but that's almost 100 times more than the digibins provide. A sensible bare minimum would be 128MB. Back when I used to have a 1.2MP camera (similar to the Pentax) that used to be just enough if I was careful not to take too many shots.

Bottom line: don't buy the Pentax unit (which is, so far as I know, the only one on the market at present). Wait for Pentax to bring out a Mark II version that takes a standard Compact Flash card. (Or for one of their competitors to do it, of course.)
 
Oh, you could overcome this design problem, which essentially mean that if you head off for a weekend's birding, you'll be out of shots by about 10:00AM on the first day, by carrying a $2000 laptop computer with you.

If I sound a little bitter, yes I am! I would have loved a pair of Pentax Digibinos, but there is just no way around that extraordinarily bad design decision.

Tony
 
My sister bought a pair of these; $99 at Radio Shack and returned them the next day. She was not at all happy with the pictures and had a heck of a time getting them to load to a computer.
 
OK, Beverly, Tannin, Rosah, thanks. You convinced me that I shouldn't waste any money on a digibin. Any shot that I might get from it certainly won't be good enough to send here to the Forum. I really figured that. Thanks again.
But to be honest, I have a.... no, forget it.
marcus
 
Take care, Marcus. I started out by thinking about digibinos and wound up buying an entire digiscoping rig.

Warning! Serious risk to your credit card ahead!
 
Just stay away from the Meade Captureview digibinos.... designed by a moron (without a nose!) as the camera section didn't allow you to put the bino eyepieces up to your eyes. I had a review pair and they produced absolutely awful results.... couldn't focus below 50 feet so you need a monstrous bird (we're talking Emu/Ostrich/Moa!!) to look a decent size in the final image.
Andy
 
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