I thought the same thing a while back, but failed to find anything along the lines of decent binoculars that incorporate a digital camera.
Which does seem strange, as it really seems there’d be a market for this. Every birder out there suffers with birds that won’t sit still to be identified. The ability to examine photos at leisure would be wonderful.
Well, they certainly exist, but as this review indicates, they are not particularly good as either binoculars or cameras unless you go very high end. I think they might be frustrating for the casual birder because of their heaviness. Most of the time you spend a lot more time looking for the bird with binoculars than actually focused on it. Unless you are birding in very open areas your opportunities for taking a good photo are only a small percentage of the time you are using your binoculars.
From the review:
Like I said, I have never encountered a birder who used them in the field, and I wasn’t really aware of them myself until this thread.
For the money, it’s a great scope, if a bit awkward to handle until you get it mounted. I’m always impressed with the clarity of the image, and it doubles as a small telescope for night sky stuff. I’m not a ‘birdwatcher’ as defined above. Those people are a bit. . .odd. In fact, I was never much interested in birds until I went on my first African safari in Botswana. The huge variety of bird life in that part of the world demands that you take an interest. And when I saw my first lilac-breasted roller, I was semi-smitten.
This is occasionally something that very slightly annoys me about a certain class of hyper-dedicated elite birders, but from the opposite direction of the above :). Utter dismissal of common birds, because they’re common.
So to be sure some birders can be tedious, antisocial weirdos in a variety of ways. The rivalries that spring up between photographers and non-photographers can get particularly heated. But that’s the case with literally ALL hobbyists. Folks can get a bit obsessive about just about anything involving their pet…obsession ;).
‘Twitchers’ is the name in the UK at least. I’ve met a few, the extreme ones are just there to tick the species off their list; it could be a stuffed one on a stick, they’d get just as much pleasure from finding it.
I enjoy watching birds, common or rare, I just think it’s pretty daft to spend over £1000 on a fancy telescope but not £5 on a book so’s you know what you’re looking at… Plus I guess making a special trip somewhere known for birds you can’t go anywhere else then spending the whole time watching birds you could see at the canal feels a bit like going to a fancy restaurant and asking for Kraft Mac 'n Cheese because it all tastes the same to you.
Personally, I have a pair of tiny elderly binoculars only, portability and lack of worry about breaking them are more important, as I’m rarely sitting in a hide all afternoon these days.
I don’t list because I’m not interested in competing. I do enjoy the challenges of birding, and, like any other interest, it provides some direction to my travel. I have an upcoming day-long tour in the mountains near Quito that I’m really looking forward to, followed by Galapagos.
It is. That’s why we take a camera with a zoom lens birding.
OP, have you asked your wife if she’s interested in a camera?
Vortex also has a great guarantee. If it breaks for pretty much any reason at any time they will replace it. My spotting scope blew over and got a chip in the lens. No problem they said, just fill out the on line form and send it in. A couple weeks later I got a new one in the mail.
I too, was unaware digital recording binocs were available till this thread. After googling such, there seems to be a wide array of them out there, ranging in price from $75 to infinity, depending on the optics and digital capabilities. Some sound quite fantastic! Reasonably lightweight, reasonable optics, and good digital rendition- if you’re willing to spend a few extra bucks.
Your notion of buying her a pair sounds like a plausible idea for a Christmas gift, so don’t let my disdain of the techno-phile “professional” birders… or other old school cranks who have no experience with such technology dissuade you (and her) from giving it a shot. A couple hundred bucks and time will tell.
FWIW: A nice substitute (or addition to) your gift would be a subscription to: Bird Watcher’s Digest. I know the publisher(s). Good down to earth people.
Not a birdwatcher in any real sense, but just barely – I look at wildlife everywhere I go, and I get considerable satisfaction out of identifying what species I just saw if at all possible. So I have some of the characteristics of a a semi-serious birdwatcher. and might one day tip over the edge.
Honestly at the end of the day that’s pretty much where I am. As a bio major once upon an era I was just into natural history in general. If anything my preference ran towards herpetology. I got into birds more in recent years mainly because I developed a photography habit( which I’m honestly not that great at, but it keeps me entertained ).
I don’t keep a life list or participate much in group outings or surveys. But I do enjoy watching/taking pictures of birds, I’ve always been decent at visual ID’s( song is a different story ), I very vaguely follow local rare bird reports, and probably qualify as a birder by most standards. But I usually don’t think of myself as one ;).
I didn’t start out as a twitcher. My dad was a tour guide, so I got pretty good at spotting and narrowing down bird IDs, but never kept track. Then I moved to California, and thought I might as well try and see every species in the field guide. I started out low-tech with a pencil in the index, but after a while I discovered ebird, an amazing resource for both birders and bird researchers. It’s an online database of sightings, uploaded by birders all over the world. If I go out birding, I do so with the intention of uploading an ebird checklist when I get home. There’s a smartphone app to do so in the field, but I prefer to use my camera roll.
So not only do I have a record of all the birding I’ve done for the last 8ish years, (“where did I see that long-eared owl again?”) bird researchers can examine the data to follow population trends. Lots of awesome tools exist (e.g., target species, to narrow down recent sightings of lifers in my area). I even keep track of the birds I see in my own yard – not every day, but I’ll upload a checklist if an unusual visitor stops by.
Check it out! https://ebird.org/home
If I could also recommend that you look into monoculars - example here - monoculars tend to be lightweight and easy to use, and are good for birds you might not be able to get a scope on (close-in forest birds like kinglets for example.)
Bumped.
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