Digital Binoculars | Universe Today

Written by John Carl Villanueva

Digital binoculars are devices that combine the zooming capabilities of binoculars with the image and video capturing capabilities of digital cameras. Since these devices allow the user to use both eyes to view a scene (a.k.a. binocular vision), it provides a wider field of view. The field of view refers to the angular extent over which a scene can be viewed.

Again, because of binocular vision, binoculars offer the advantage of rendering three dimensional images, particularly for nearer objects, as opposed to the monocular views provided by telescopes. That means, it is more comfortable to view an object through binoculars than through telescopes.

Now, since digital binoculars have digital camera-like features, then you can expect practically all of the basic qualities that a typical digital camera has.

Just like ordinary binoculars, you can zoom in or out of a scene on digital binoculars. But in addition to that feature, the image that eventually gets captured is consistent with what you see in the scope. So if you've zoomed in, you'll be able to capture the magnified image and when you zoom out, you'll be able to capture the reduced image.

Did I just mention videos earlier? That's right, aside from the usual images, these devices can capture videos as well. This feature can come in handy when you want to capture every action of a moving target; a bird, a racing horse, a racing car, or a wild animal perhaps.

Like all digital cameras, you can store images in these devices. Some have built-in memory on which to store images and videos on. Others have expansion slots for portable flash storage devices like SD cards. Thus, if you want to be sure you never run out of storage space, then you can always bring a stack of empty SD cards (provided of course your device is capable of reading and writing such cards).

Then once you get home, you can easily hook it up to a USB connector, attach the connector to a computer's USB port, and transfer your captured files. There, you can view the images and videos on a much larger screen. You can also edit them with your favorite photo or video editing software.

So you can have more time capturing images or videos, always make sure you don't leave home without spare rechargeable batteries. You'll never know how long you'll be out chasing objects to shoot with your digital binoculars.

Looking for binoculars for astronomy? Click on that link for an article here in Universe Today that features just that.

We've also got another article that features the Celestron binocular.

Tired eyes? We recommend you let your ears do the work for a change. Here are some episodes from Astronomy Cast:
Atmospheres
Plate Tectonics

Filed under: Astronomy

Tags: binocular, digital binoculars, digital camera