Night vision devices

P

PoorOldSpike

Guest
"Now o'er the one-half world nature seems dead,...now witchcraft celebrates pale Hecate's offerings.."- Macbeth
"You demi-puppets that by moonshine do the sour green ringlets make.."- The Tempest
"Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it.."- Henry Beston


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There have been assorted small hand-held night vision devices on sale to the public for many years at affordable prices, I haven't got one myself but they're certainly worth considering for UFO/ghost/Bigfoot-chasing or whatever, ha ha..:)
There seem to be two basic sorts, image-intensifiers (greenish image), and thermal imagers (infra-red black/white).
Has anybody at FGM got one, or has used one in the military?

Here are an assortment of net sites I googled-

USEFUL DISCUSSION FORUM- http://www.opticsplanet.com/msgboard/forum-7.html

LIST OF STOCKISTS- http://www.atncorp.com/wheretobuy

TECHY STUFF- http://www.opticsplanet.net/htb-nvd.html


PS- I found out by accident that my simple digicam (below, it's only 4 inches wide) has better night vision than the human eye when I stuck it out the window and took a night shot of my street, so it seems some digicams are a useful alternative to proper night vision devices!

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Here's the shot, the cam almost turned night into day (no flash), very impressive.
I've not had the cam for long and am still experimenting with it, there are various settings that can be tweaked to get a better image than this, and I should have rested it on something to stop camera shake.

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For work when we go all ninja, we have 5 sets of generation 3 (same as the US military) NVG's. Nice equipment and really handy in the dead of night.

We also have 1 set of Thermal optics, they are fantastic. The range is great. The NVG's are good but for close in stuff, the Thermals work their magic from km's away. About 1.5 kms away one night we were tracking a suspect and on the NVG's we were looking round and couldn't see him, but with the thermals we had his position where he was hiding in the trees, and he couldn't see us either.

Like in the Predator movie "I see you".
 
Holy cats eyes Batman!
I bought a cheap little tripod to keep the cam steady and my night-time experimental photography is coming on in leaps and bounds..:)

My street, human eyeball view-
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Same view with the camera set to 'night landscape'-
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Eyeball view looking across the street-
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And with 'night landscape' setting-
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PS- I thought the cam was bust when I first tried the 'night landscape' setting because the LCD viewfinder went blank when I pressed the shutter, but after about 20 seconds there was a click as the shutter closed, it wasn't bust, it'd been open all that time to collect as much light as it could, bless it..:)
After downloading the pics to my PC I was able to further enhance the night pics. i'm telling you, this cam is almost as good as military night vision equipment, ha ha!
 
Cool pictures? Already photographed something one shouldn't actually see? :biggrin1:
 
Make sure to share all the sleazy and x-rated pictures you take! :biggrin1:
 
nice work POS ;)
Here some tips if you like.
(just ignore me if I'm already saying stuff you know ;) )
Bring up your ISO factor. Start at say 800 and work up. Your digital 'film' becomes more senstive to light, thus better in the dark. Downside is that the image will become more 'pixelled'. how do you say correls?
Also, open your diaphram as far as possibly. The lower the number, the wider the aperture becomes. Thus catching more light.
A tripoed is a must, becuase you will, as you stated experince longer shutter times. Put your shutter on manual and try 1 to 2 mins ;)
The use of a cable release can be very beneficery in some cases
I've made pictures in complete darkness which looked like they where taken in daylight.
 
Right I am going to go into work tonight and do a wee test for you. 3 shots, in the dark, with NVG's, and with the thermal scope.

That toy is amazing.
 
Breaklight said:
nice work POS ;)
Here some tips if you like..
Click to expand...

Thanks mate I've saved them to Wordpad for reference..:)
You wouldn't believe how many weird and wonderful settings there are and i've only scratched the surface so far..:)
A great advantage of digicams is that you can keep trying all sorts of experimental exposures and stuff and it don't cost you a penny, the pics (a hundred or more) are stored on the cams memory card and you simply download them to your PC, which means the card is freed up to have another hundred snaps put on it and so on..:)
And if you're on holiday away from your PC, you just remove the card when its full and keep it safe, then buy a new one (mine was about £8 (12 US dollars).
(You know all this of course, I'm only saying it to let other people know)

My cam also does videos too but it's not so good at filming moving images on monitor and TV screens because the auto-focus seems to be hunting for the best setting, resulting in occasional blurring.
Unfortunately there seems to be no option to overide the auto-focus and go manual to lock it so I have to keep my fingers crossed that it does its job reasonably well.
 
I just went out to try a few more 'night landscape' shots on Plymouth seafront,
This ones okay because there are plenty of streetlights around-
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But this one's not so hot because there are no street lights in the Atlantic ocean, just some buoy lights, the odd ship and the moon, but it's still better than the human eyeball.
As usual, the shutter stayed open for around 20 secs and I was using a small tripod-
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This one pans left a bit to take in that ship at anchor on the left, it's lit up like a christmas tree.
Drat I forgot to do a zoom shot of it, i'll go back out with my cam tomorrow night to see if it's still there..
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Plymouths being battered by gales and squalls today and I don't know if i'll be able to get out after dark to snap the 'christmas tree' ship, so I just popped out to snap it in daylight and here are the results.
(PS- i'm only posting them in FGM to show the capabilities of small digicams in case anybody's thinking of getting one to take pics of air displays, military exhibitions and parades etc.
Just make sure you get one with a zoom lens (at least 5x), one shouldn't set you back more than around £70 (110 US dollars)

Plymouth Sound today, no zoom. The peacefulness is an illusion; there's a bleddy gale raging out there. The 'christmas tree' is in the centre, it looks like a Royal navy supply ship of some sort.
The one on the left wasn't there last night, it's an RN destroyer-
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I used my tiny tripod (6" tall, below) for these shots to eliminate camera shake and get maximum pic sharpness, it's only a simple cheap thing, £14 (19 USD) and you can stand it on a bench or wall or whatever. The legs are bendable to adjust the up/down angle. You really do need a tripod for 10x zoom shots (unless your hands are as steady as a rock, or if you're resting the cam on something), but with a lesser zoom level of around 5x or less you could probably get away with not needing a tripod.
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The 'christmas tree' ship on full 10x zoom, plus PC enhancement via the Irfanview prog-
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The destroyer, 10x zoom plus further enhancement and enlargement, I've posted it at the FGM maximum size of 1600 pixels wide so we can spy on its weapons, it means it'll overlap off the edge of our screens but we can drag the slider bar along the bottom of this post to scan it all. If I'm not mistaken I see a 4" gun, Harpoon anti-ship missiles, Sea Dart SAMs and at least one Gatling CIWS.
There's quite a swell beyond the breakwater..
(PS- the sun was behind the pics, hence the slight 'silhouette' effect; it'd have been better if the sun was this side of them, lighting them up fully)
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Well I just popped out to snap the 'christmas tree' ship at 10x zoom, I'm not sure this is it, but it was anchored in the same place and it was the only ship out there tonight-
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Then the 'Pont Aven' ferry pulled out so I snapped that too, it's going to France or Spain.
(and because it was moving I couldn't use the long 'night landscape' 20-sec exposure, so I juggled the aperture/shutter/ISO settings and it somehow came out reasonably well)
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Finally I snapped the old Plymouth Barbican waterfront, my place is just out of sight-
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(PS- I took about 20 pics total on various settings and these were the best of the bunch, I'm still learning the camera and even these could be improved a lot with experience)
 
ok, finally got in to do it.

Shot 1: With the lights on, just got a mate to stand in a completely dark room over in the corner.

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Now, just a normal shot showing ......darkness.

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Now with the NVG's

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And finally with the Thermals.

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