Written on March 12, 2008 – 4:54 am | by Bogdan Alex |
I’m no birdwatcher and I certainly don’t do too much spying on animals and people, but when I see something like the MINOX Digital Eyepiece Camera, an abrupt change of plans could fuel a horde of dark desires.

What’s so special about this gizmo? MINOX managed to fit a quality telescope lens with a decent 5MP digital camera. The attached camera has a 2.4” TFT display and an eyepiece just like standard DSLR devices. Overall, MINOX assembled the entire thing into a compact size device measuring 68 X 56 X 71 mm and weighing around 220 g.

The telephoto lens is able to cope with a 40x magnification, and MINOX even provides bayonet fittings for more renowned scopes from Carl Zeiss, Leica, Swarovski and Kowa, as well as MINOX’s own MD 62 range. In addition, the camera hybrid is weather resistant and shock proof so you can carry it around in the middle of a tornado, still getting incredible pictures.

More features include a ‘flip-up’ built-in shield for the TFT display and an internal memory of 128 MB as well as a port for SD memory cards with a capacity of up to 4 Gigabytes. Power is provided by a replaceable high-capacity lithium-ion battery. They even included a remote control and a USB cable.

No word on the MSRP price from MINOX, but a closer search reveals that this gadget sells for only $449. I sure want one of these now.