Sony’s 3D Binoculars Cost Too Much For the Average Bird-Watc

[Silversurfer]

Well, maybe crims can afford to whack $1,400 - $2,000 down on a pair of digital binoculars, if they know the pay-offs going to be good. The Dev-3 and Dev-5 models shoot 7.1MP photos and 3D video.

Both models also shoot full HD video if 3D wrens aren't your cup of tea, and have image stabilisation last seen in Sony's range of compact cameras. So why spend an extra $600 on the Dev-5? For the GPS receiver, so you can geotag photos and video, plus the 20x digital magnification.

On sale in November, when burglary recces are bound to get a little "larger than life." [Sony]

http://gizmodo.com/5832466/sonys-3d-bin ... /gallery/1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[cybereality]

Sick!

[ShawmK]

This could actually be interesting....

Not as binoculars, that's silly; but remove the camera lenses, and Sony have the makings of a very nice HMD here. I wonder what kind of resolution/field of view they have...

There is almost no point to this camera for distance viewing; with the lenses that close together, there will be no discernible 3D effect.

[Likay]

There is almost no point to this camera for distance viewing; with the lenses that close together, there will be no discernible 3D effect.

Dito. And the effect decreases a lot on larger distances too. In order to give good stereo on longer distances they could have an adjustable separationbase up to one metre or so.

[WiredEarp]

I don't think these are going to be any use for an HMD, unless the economies of scale start to work in our favour if they sell a lot of these (and at $2000 I somehow dont think they will be massive sellers).

Here are the specs of the displays (from here: http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores ... ifications" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)

Viewfinder
* Diopter Adjustment : Yes (-3.5 - +3.5)
* Eye relief : 14.3mm
* Field of View : 35.6degrees (16:9)
* Interpupilary distance : 55-75mm
* Type : 2x 0.45-inch (1.1cm) Wide (16:9); 1227k dots (852x3(RGB)x480)

So, basically the same as those new Wrap VR goggles (852x480). Crappy FOV. Plus, I can't imagine that the quality of the actual display at those resolutions will be anything like real binoculars (which probably have equivalent resolutions in the 4000x4000+ range).

So, not really good binoculars. No better for VR than the current stuff around (although, adjustable IPD). For $2000, i'd buy a decent pair of focus free binoculars instead if I was in the market for binocs.

If they had used a beam splitting system to record what was displayed in an OPTICAL viewfinder, I believe these would be much better.