Sony Dev-5 Digital Recording Binoculars. RRP $1999 at other stores.
http://www.sony.com.au/product/dev-5
Got it for $500 off at a Sony store. Paid $1500. Perhaps this is Australia wide, not sure?
Footage Examples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=353N_mxcFi4
Product Availability:
Currently out of stock
ok, i get the 3D function, but $1500 for binoculars with only 20X is a bit rich, i'd rather a HD camcorder with higher magnification optics
Now what suss spying activity would people possibly use this for?
bird watching, wildlife watching and sports action
Bird rhymes with girl, hmm….
You can go up top centrepoint tower pretty much at any time, align your camcorder/digicamera lens with the high powered binoculars up there. Does get some good footage of the surrounds.
good for stalking
Actually, this is what private investigators would use when they need to collect evidence/perform and document surveillance activities
these have "20x magnification with digital zoom"….. that's pretty poor as it will be quite pixelated… as opposed to 20x Optical zoom. Better to get full HD camcorder.
I would have thought being binoculars, they'd be 20x through the lenses, and then digital zoom on top. I haven't clicked the link to confirm, though, because I'm pretty lazy, nor am I particularly interested…
Without downloading the manual, it looks like they are optical zoom to x10 and the digital zoom doubles it to x20.
These are more of a video camera (with 3D) than a pair of binos. 10x optical zoom (only 4.3x in 3D mode!) seems a bit low for binoculars/surveillance. As a camera though, it looks nice with a good bunch of features like image stabilization. Digital zoom is pretty good and provides useful pictures (Sony use pretty good processing algorithms in their products). They pitch this at the outdoors/wildlife application rather than something that would require long zooms, e.g. surveillance. Even at $1500 it is still too much of an expensive toy for me (and I love my toys :) ).
"These are more of a video camera (with 3D) than a pair of binos."
It's a pair of binoculars, because you are actually looking through two lenses, as opposed to a single lens (which is what a video camera is). Therefore what you see through will have a greater field of vision.
I know they are binoculars, the point I was making was that they have more in common with a video camera than a scope for surveillance, especially with their limited optical magnification. Who needs magnification down to 0.9x (0.5x in 3D, 0.3x in photo mode) and focusing down to 1 centimeter in a pair of binoculars? (but that would be useful in a video camera). These days your definition of "video camera" isn't accurate, there are stereoscopic cameras with twin diopters used for making 3D movies e.g. http://www.stereo3d.com/img/21st3dvx3.jpg. And the field of vision of 35.6° isn't particularly great, in fact it is exactly the same ratio of 16:9 which we use for "widescreen video". http://www.sony.com.au/product/dev-5/specs The final thing is that there is no direct optical path; there is a front end (a stereoscopic video camera) and you are looking at an electronic viewfinder at the back-end. Just like a video camera.
from sony website "Ergonomic Stealth Design
Stay invisible to your subjects"
need a waterproof version or at least water resistant
If you put up and samples on Youtube I would love to see