I'm a new birder and not yet good enough to do IDs on sight (unless it's a pigeon or sparrow or something obvious). I generally wind up juggling bincoluars and camera back and forth, and usually miss any chance I have of identifying the bird with one or the other. The obvious answer is "get better at ID'ing". But I was also thinking of going for a pair of binocular cameras. I was wondering what people's views on these are. Are they worth it? Which is the best brand? All thoughts welcome!
I worked in the optics trade, (mostly dealing with bins and scopes for birders) for several years and can honestly say the ones we sold [ perhaps 20 in six years] were pretty lousy - the idea is great but no company has come up with a decent unit, hence the reason why hardly anyone uses one for birding purposes.
Personally I would suggest you get a good pair of binos and work on your id' as you state, or concentrate on taking pictures for now. I tried to do both but found after a while I was not watching the birds and useless at photography.
Good luck
I'd focus on just spending more time enjoying looking at birds. The longer you do it, the more subtle clues of behavior and small plumage variations will become obvious to you.
I find trying to take pictures of things throws you completely off of trying to ID a bird, because instead of focusing on details that you can see and hear about the bird, you're trying to get the damn thing in the frame in decent light to ID later.