On Sunday 2/28/2010, I went out to try some digibinning – taking photographs with a digital camera through a binocular. Armed with a pair of Swarovski EL 8.5×42 Swarovision binoculars and snapshot adapter to supplement our review of the Swarovisions, and a Nikon CoolPix P6000, I went to look for a Great Horned Owl that was reported in a local park. We easily found the owl with the aid of a bypasser.

My Process

Since this was an exercise in trying out digibinning, I took some photos without the binocular for comparison. The image on the left shows the comparison between a photo taken with just the digital camera (on left) and then one taken through the binoculars with the digital camera (on right).

These are full frame photos. I resized the photos and combined them into a single image, but I did not crop them. For this comparison, to see what you get shooting through the binoculars, it is only valid if we maintain full frame photos.

There is definitely a learning curve here in aiming the camera and binocular. The difference was really quite astounding and the possibilities are great. We will certainly have to try this a bit more.