Lidl Night Vision

[CAPTAIN FANTASTIC]

Lidl are selling night vision scopes (£59); does anyone has any experience on these cheap night visions?

 

[windrose]

they do work,

bought on 4 years ago, not bad, good at anchor for looking about, and not to bad for looking for fishing buoys on a night passage, blinding in harbour if you look ashore.

 

[elton]

They screw your night vision. Once you've looked through them you've got to keep looking through them until sun comes up.

 

[concentrik]

Lidl are selling night vision scopes (£59); does anyone has any experience on these cheap night visions?

I did look at them last time round but I was confusing them with infra-red or thermal imaging devices. These just amplify visible light and are very 'noisy'; that'll be why they're 60 quid and the others are... well, loads more.

 

[Chalker]

Is this a south coast item/ Cannot find them on the Swindon site

 

[nigelmercier]

Lidl are selling night vision scopes (£59); does anyone has any experience on these cheap night visions?

I've got a £100 NV scope on the boat, more of a gimmick than a useful tool. A friend has a £2000+ military grade NV scope, imported from the US. Looking through it is is like the sun came out, astonishing.

 

[Pete R]

There was a thread on them last year. Some people said they were OK and they can identify lights with them???
Me, I don't think they are any use for boating at all.

 

[nigelmercier]

There was a thread on them last year. Some people said they were OK and they can identify lights with them???

So long as they are green!

 

[maxi77]

I did look at them last time round but I was confusing them with infra-red or thermal imaging devices. These just amplify visible light and are very 'noisy'; that'll be why they're 60 quid and the others are... well, loads more.

All night vision goggles or similar items are light amplifiers so if there is no light then there is nothing to amplify. The image they give is normally green and white thgough you can get other colours. They can easily be overloaded by any light so instrument lights on low will dazzle them, and can cause damage. ~I suspect in some circumstances they may be useful though they do take a bit of practice to get used to. Just to confuse things more they normally operate in the very near infra red, just out of the visible spectrum so not only do you have the green picture all sorts of textures on objects can look strange as you are seeing an image you do not normaly sea.

Infra red devices in most cases see the heat energy given off and once again the image is different to normal light. Some near infra red devices can be used in conjunction with a suitable infra red torch. Similar torches are sometimes offered with NVG devices, but make sure the wavelengths match.

As for seeing lights they will most certainly work but may overload on brighter ones. All lights wii appear the same colour as to NVGs all light is white.

 

[theoldsalt]

I find that using a good quality binocular with a large objective lense gives adequate night vision. The large OG pulls in enough light to significantly improve identifying objects at night.

 

[KellysEye]

Agree, there is no point in carrying night vision kit on a boat. It is never pitch black and most hazards are lit anyway.

 

[GrahamM376]

They screw your night vision. Once you've looked through them you've got to keep looking through them until sun comes up.

Not so. First generation units have drawbacks such as being blinded by bright lights but can at times be useful. Good for amplifying dim lights at a distance but obviously no good for colour recognition. Ours doesn't often come off the shelf but on the odd occasion it's been worth having.

 

[maxi77]

Not so. First generation units have drawbacks such as being blinded by bright lights but can at times be useful. Good for amplifying dim lights at a distance but obviously no good for colour recognition. Ours doesn't often come off the shelf but on the odd occasion it's been worth having.

Whilst the later generation NVGs are better at dealing with bright lights as there is no control of the amplification process they can still suffer problems. If they had been as cheap as they are now when we were setting off I probably would have bought them and found them useful as we did a fair number of night passages.

 

[bikedaft]

got a £100 job from aldi or lidls a year ago

infra red sender only goes out to 100m, so can use for range finding. or you can get a more pwerful 12v infra red lamp, but not done that yet

have (intermittently) found it quite useful ie i can see a rock at 200m when normally i can't see til 100m (at night). it often not dark enough to need it tho.

its a monocular, so can keep night vision in one eye and use t'other for the scope