My wifes’ birthday is coming up. She’s really gotten into bird feeding and bird watching. She tries to identify all the visitors but they move pretty damn fast. I’ve seen ads for binoculars with digital camera capability - so she could capture what she’s seeing and look in up later.
Any Dopers out there ever use them? Any recommendations? Since we are retired, cost is a moderate concern.
Thanks!
I can say, the Vivitar pair my wife picked up are absolute garbage. So there’s one off the list.
Looking for informed opinions? Let’s visit IMHO. Moved.
samclem Moderator, General Questions
That’s the one I was trying to think of(“something-tar. Not Reptar, that’s from the Rugrats…”). My mom bought some for my dad, and he immediately returned them.
Honestly, I think these are a compromise product, not particularly good at being binoculars or a camera. You might consider getting a solid ultrazoom camera if capturing images is really what you want.
I was hoping to get the easier “aiming” that is inherent in the binocular facepiece as opposed to the monocular field of view in a typical viewfinder.
Gaffa, thanks for the input on Vivitar.
Well, the digitals have the view screen. But, I don’t know if that makes for easier aiming than binoculars.
This ultrazoom
Has a viewfinder that twists all around so you can angle it in different ways and still get a good picture.
I got it a few weeks ago because I was impressed with the zoom. I haven’t used it quite enough in the wild to tell you for sure it would be great for bird watching. But, I have taken a couple of pictures of birds up in trees (or wires) that turned out pretty well.
It’s zoom isn’t as good as binoculars. Which was a little disappointing to me, I was hoping for something where I could see Los Angeles from Santa Barbara. But, I guess that might have been aiming too far.
At full zoom it’s pretty hard to use the LCD on any camera unless you are on a tripod. It’s much easier to hold the viewfinder to your eye or else it’s impossible to keep the camera on subject. The more zoom you have, the harder it gets.
But with a little practice it’s very easy to pan and shoot with a camera. Binocs are probably a bit easier, but not much.
May I suggest you think in terms of a camera adapter for a telescope. I just googled the first thing I saw as an example but the premise is that you use a quality TTL (through the lense) camera and a modest telescope. You want a camera with OPTICAL image stabilization. You’ll also need a tripod.