Celestron VistaPix 8x22 Digital Camera Binoculars

love it

As binoculars, it focuses fine but the only way it would ever be comfortable to hold to your face is if you had No nose! Handling is very awkward and your nose gets in the way because of the way the camera is positioned in the center of the binoculars. As a camera, it's not!! Your pictures do NOT focus in on what you are seeing through the binoculars. It produces blurry pictures no matter what the distance. It also does not auto-balance the light, your pictures will also have unnatural shadowing unless you are in very bright sunlight. The enclosed instructions are also very little help in picture taking and troubleshooting...

This works great indeed if you didn't have a nose. Pics are blurry unless U have VERY bright sunlight, otherwise..dont' take pics. Not what I expected.Would not recommend.

If the highest resolution of this binocular/camera (640x480 pixels) is good enough for you, you won't find a better deal than the VistaPix 8x22. Though it is the same size as the similarly priced Meade Capture View 8x22 binocular/camera, Celestron says that the Vista Pix will hold 3 times as many high resolution frames (that is, 120 exposures)! Experience with my own unit seems to indicate that they are rating it conservatively because the camera appears to store many more frames than that, though I haven't checked to see what the actual limit is yet. Since both the Celestron and Meade binoculars have the same amount of memory, the extra pictures must result from a different video compression method that makes each picture take less memory.Add to that the Continuous Exposure Mode (up to two minutes of action video in low res - a bit jerky but acceptible for many purposes) and the Time Delay mode (with 10 second delay before a picture is automatically taken) and it is obvious that this product is quite a deal for the money!Oh, and did I say that the binocular optics give very crisp clear views?