Digital Cameras

Bushnell ImageView

By Miguel Blanco ⋅ April 30, 2008 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

If you’re a big fan of James Bond movies keep reading. Today we review the Bushnell ImageView, a combination digital camera and binocular device which seems to have been taken straight out of 007 spy flick. The neighbors might want to close their blinds right about now. The Bushnell ImageView is nicely designed with clean lines in a sleek contemporary shape. The compact sliver body is reinforced with black rubber handles and controls. A spy would feel aesthetically comfortable storing it in his Armani suit. The digital camera, mounted in the center of the unit, has its own lens and works independently of the optics.

The Bushnell ImageView comes with a USB cable for downloading those top-secret pictures to your computer. Some nice features include the ability to take 3 continuous shots in a row automatically, a 10 second timer in case you want to run across a field to be in the shot, the ability to change the quality of the picture from high to low, and the ability to record short AVI movies of your neighbors in the shower. The ImageView’s LCD display tells you how many pictures you’ve taken, how much AAA battery life you have left, and what mode you are in.

A trial run with the Bushnell ImageView yielded the following results: The ImageView works great as a pair of binoculars. This is no surprise since Bushnell has been making high quality binoculars and telescopes for years. Although the resolution is only 640x 480, the digital camera worked reasonably well during daylight, provided you hold the binoculars very still when snapping a picture. At night though, when spies like to party, the camera is rendered unusable. Bushnell should make an infared version of this device for turbo dorks like me.

A CD-Rom with all the software you need to download pictures is included with the ImageView. This is the one area where Bushnell got too ambitious. I have a real problem with manufacturers creating their own image manipulation software because in their rush to get the product to market they often overlook the usablity of the software. Since most users are accustomed to using the very well designed Windows XP tools to download and manipulate their photos, additional software is often unnecessary and becomes a burden to users when they are forced to use it.

All in all, this product is fun and cool for someone who is looking for a new toy. It seems as though Bushnell did a great job on what they know how to do such as the optics and design, but areas which are new to them such as the digital cameral camera and software could use improvement. Let’s hope they catch up in those areas before an established digital camera maker decides to compete in this area.

Product Specifications Magnification X Objective Lens: 10×25
Focus System: Center
Prism System: Roof
Field of View ft@1000yds/m@1000m: 300/100
Exit Pupil (mm): 2.5
Weight (oz/g): 11.4

Requirements

Pentium® 166MMX minimum (Pentium II 266 recommended) or equivalent AMD® processor
Windows® 95/98/ME/NT/2000 or XP
Minimum 32 MB of RAM
200 megabytes free hard drive space
USB port (capable of providing power to connected devices)

Conclusion

This camera is perfect for someone who has everything and is looking for a new toy. Because the ImageView is a hybrid, it should not be considered your primary choice for a set of binoculars. Instead, check out some of Bushnell’s other high quality models for this purpose.

Pros:

Lightweight and portable

Cons:

Software is not user-friendly
Camera does not work well at night
Image resolution/quality is poor

Quality: 5.3 out of 10
Features: 7.6 out of 10
Price: 7.5 out of 10

Overall: 6.8 out of 10