Binocular cameras - any advice (1 Viewer)

I'm a new birder and not yet good enough to do IDs on sight (unless it's a pigeon or sparrow or something obvious). I generally wind up juggling bincoluars and camera back and forth, and usually miss any chance I have of identifying the bird with one or the other. The obvious answer is "get better at ID'ing". But I was also thinking of going for a pair of binocular cameras. I was wondering what people's views on these are. Are they worth it? Which is the best brand? All thoughts welcome!

I worked in the optics trade, (mostly dealing with bins and scopes for birders) for several years and can honestly say the ones we sold [ perhaps 20 in six years] were pretty lousy - the idea is great but no company has come up with a decent unit, hence the reason why hardly anyone uses one for birding purposes.
Personally I would suggest you get a good pair of binos and work on your id' as you state, or concentrate on taking pictures for now. I tried to do both but found after a while I was not watching the birds and useless at photography.
Good luck

I'd focus on just spending more time enjoying looking at birds. The longer you do it, the more subtle clues of behavior and small plumage variations will become obvious to you.

I find trying to take pictures of things throws you completely off of trying to ID a bird, because instead of focusing on details that you can see and hear about the bird, you're trying to get the damn thing in the frame in decent light to ID later.

Hi JP,
Your wish for a user friendly and effective combined binocular/camera design is widely shared. Thus far no one has stepped forward to fill this niche. There are technical experts on this forum who could tell you why no one has built such a combination yet and perhaps they will chime in.
There are some designs on offer, but they consist of a lash up combining marginal binoculars with an execrable camera built around a tiny separate lens. These take a wretched picture and give a poor image to the observer, so save your cash.
As Pyrtle notes, it is probably better to first get reasonably familiar with the birds first and then to focus on the photography.
At least in my limited experience, photography very easily becomes a consuming hobby, which requires you to schlep a big camera and a backpack full of heavy lenses and gear in the pursuit of the killer shot. Birders have it easier.

Forget it, unless you are planning to take photos of Birds the size of Herons/Swans. Any small bird is just to say identifiable as the minimum distance on them is 15m. The binoculars are good images. Unless technolgy has came along in leaps and bounds with these over the past few years give them a wide berth.

Here is 2 threads about them from the past
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=24546&highlight=Viewcatcher
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=16932

I concur with the others here.

If you want a simple(ish) camera for handheld bird fotography take a look at the superzooms (useful for documenting rarities). See the photograph forums for more ideas.

I suspect that just working on your ID skills may be money better spent. If you haven't done so yet get an intro to bird ID (as well as your field guide ... a field guide just isn't enough). Two US biased (so the birds are US birds but the techniques are universal) are Sibley's Birding Basics and the National Geographic Birding Essentials. I'm sure there similar UK/Europe books. Or spend time in the field with a more expert birder or a local birding club's introduction to birding in the field. As Bill Bailey says "Start with ducks. They don't move and have brightly patterns. And they're everywhere!". This is not something technology can fix.