• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • Shop
    • Gift Vouchers
    • Binoculars and Scopes
    • View Cart
    • Your Account
      • edit-account
      • edit-address
      • lost-password
  • Wildlife Tours
    • Discover Wildlife Weekends
    • Guided Wildlife and Birding Walks
    • Custom Wildlife and Birding Tours
  • Schools
  • Books
  • News
    • Irish Wildlife News
    • International Wildlife News
    • Wildlife Events
    • Wildlife Press Releases
  • Articles
    • Blog
      • Birding
      • Wildlife Photography
      • Whales and Dolphins
      • Mammals
      • Wildlife Podcasts
        • The Calendar Road
      • Biodiversity
      • Wildlife Calendar
    • Species Profiles
      • Amphibians
      • Birds
      • Fish
      • Fungi
      • Invertebrates
      • Mammals
      • Plants
      • Reptiles
    • Feature Articles
      • Choosing Binoculars
      • Birding for Beginners
      • How to watch whales and dolphins
      • How to watch Basking Sharks
      • Wildlife travel
    • Wildlife Portfolio
    • Wild Wide Web
    • Reviews
      • Book Reviews
      • Gear Reviews
        • Wildlife Optics
          • Binocular Reviews
          • Spotting Scope Reviews
        • Wildlife Clothing
        • Wildlife Accessories
  • Work with us
    • Write for us
    • Advertise with us
    • Sponsorship Opportunities
    • Wildlife Marketing Services
  • About
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Disclosure Statement
    • Cookie policy (EU)
  • Contact

Ireland's Wildlife

Irish wildlife, nature and biodiversity

You are here: Home / Featured / New wildlife ID tech announced by Swarovski Optik

New wildlife ID tech announced by Swarovski Optik

February 26, 2020 by Calvin Jones 1 Comment

Swarovski Optik's new dG

Swarovski Optik, one of the upper-echelon brands for birding and wildlife optics, is branching out into the tech world with the release of in intriguing new piece of high-tech kit. The new dG (Digital Guide) pairs cutting-edge optics with digital camera technology, integrated WiFi and automated digital identification apps for birds and animals.

The family-owned Austrian company is claiming a “world-first” with its new product: a long-range optical device that allows the user to capture what they’re looking at and sent it to their paired smartphone for documenting, sharing and identification.

Great optics as standard

dG from Swarovski Optik

The dG offers 8x optical magnification, matching the most popular choice for all-around birding and wildlife binoculars. As you’d expect from Swarovski, it comes with the same suite of industry-leading anti-reflective high-transmission coatings you’ll find in the company’s flagship birding and wildlife binoculars. The objective lens diameter of 25mm is a little on the small size, but coupled with the high-quality optics and coatings should deliver a bright, clear image in all but the most challenging of lighting conditions. 

Instant sharing

A built-in 13MP camera allows you to capture what you’re viewing through the dG in real-time and send it to your smartphone, while the integrated WiFi hotspot lets you share a live-stream of your sightings with up to 5 nearby devices simultaneously. You can also share your images to your social media streams via your smartphone.

Works with popular ID apps

Swarovski dG

The dG connects to the popular Merlin Bird ID app and dG mammals to provide identification suggestions based on photos you capture via the device, your location and the time of year. Digital Photo ID is a nascent technology but is improving all the time. The Merlin app in particular (a project of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology), does a surprisingly good job of narrowing down your ID options, if not nailing the particular species, although it still struggles with trickier ID challenges.

Initial thoughts

While I’m not sure the dG will ever replace a pair of decent binoculars for birding, the ability to share experiences with a group could prove very useful, and while digital ID is still in its infancy it’s something that’s improving in leaps and bounds, so it will be interesting to see how this develops with the dG and its successors.

These first impressions are based on information provided by Swarovski Optik and not on any hands-on experience of the dG device. We’re hoping to receive a review unit from Swarovski Optik UK in the not too distant future, so stay tuned for a full review on the Ireland’s Wildlife site once we’ve had a chance to put one through its paces here on the West Cork coast. 

The dG will be available from 01 April from selected Swarovski Optik retailers and online via swarovskiptik.com and will cost around €2,000. For more information check out the dG product page on the Swarovski Optik UK website.

Filed Under: Featured, Wildlife Tech Tagged With: Bird Identification, birding, swarovski optik

About Calvin Jones

Calvin Jones is a freelance writer, author, birder and lifelong wildlife enthusiast. He is founder and editor of IrelandsWildlife.com and founder and wildlife guide of Ireland's Wildlife Tours offering wildlife and birding holidays on Ireland's south coast.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Search the site

  • Microthemer - Visual editor for your WordPress site

Subscribe to the mailing list

Supporting Ireland’s Wildlife

  • Microthemer - Visual editor for your WordPress site

*****

Footer

Experience Ireland’s Wildlife for yourself

Breaching humpback whale Ireland

Join us on a wildlife adventure on Ireland’s Wild South Coast… and find out first hand why we call this Europe’s Undiscovered Wildlife Frontier.

Find out more…

Ireland's Wildlife runs on the Genesis Framework from StudioPress · Hosted with InterServer

Recent Additions

  • World Migratory Bird Day — ESRI Mapping Migration
  • Vanguard VEO HD 2 8×42 Binocular Review
  • 2023 Discover Wildlife Weekend Dates
  • Review: Hawke Frontier APO 10×42 Binocular
  • Book Review: Crossbill Guides, Ireland
  • Avian Influenza hits Irish seabird colonies
  • German Precision Optics (GPO) Passion HD 10×42 Binocular Review
  • Beneficial Garden Insects and How to Attract Them to Your Garden

Tags

#IWOnTour 8x Binoculars audio binoculars biodiversity birding birds Birdwatch Ireland books cetaceans citizen science CJ Wildlife competition conservation Cork fin whale full size binoculars garden birds garden wildlife Golden Eagle Trust Hawke humpback whale Ireland IWDG Kerry national biodiversity data centre npws optics raptors review reviews spring stranding Vanguard west cork whales whales and dolphins whale watching whalewatching white tailed eagle Wild Atlantic Way Wildlife wildlife crime wildlife photography wildlife podcasts

Take it from the top....

Copyright © 2023 Ireland's Wildlife · Site Design by West Cork Websites · Content by CJ Writing

Manage Cookie Consent
Like most sites, Ireland's Wildlife uses cookies to improve functionality, enhance your user experience and to gauge the popularity of our content.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}