[nabs-l] Curious about a fill-in monocular idea

[Rob Lambert]

What I mean by fill in is this: If you haven't the bucks to buy one and you are on hold from a foundation for some reason, why not try this? For those who can get along with it, why not use a parent's video camera? Many of the newer cameras (particularly those with hard drives or flash memory based recording) are designed in such a way where you could use it as a monocular of sorts without recording anything to memory. The one I saw today, for instance, was designed to record to SD memory cards. There was no card in the camera, but that didn't stop me from trying it out. It was a great camera for this idea - the digital zoom was 700x (no joke) and it's so tiny you can put it in your pocket. Also, depending on your required monocular prescription, it may be about the same price (at Best Buy they wanted $300; $260 if you get one that's already been opened). So, you get to kill two birds with one stone by having a video camera that doubles as a crude
 monocular solution. Thoughts?