NV binoculars at Lidl

I've got one of the older models. A bit rubbish. They're really basically low light mini tv screen type things with rottten resolution. Of course current model could be a vast improvement but...
 
I may take the plunge as a group of sports boat owner friends are keen on doing a night run to poole or lulworth cove from the Hamble

Proposal was to travel in convey at speed which is fraught with dangers in my view.

I'll see if this IR thingy gives enough advance warning of lobster pots other vessels etc.......
 
Hot Property said:
I may take the plunge as a group of sports boat owner friends are keen on doing a night run to poole or lulworth cove from the Hamble

Proposal was to travel in convey at speed which is fraught with dangers in my view.

I'll see if this IR thingy gives enough advance warning of lobster pots other vessels etc.......
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If these binoculars are IR rather than proper night vision image intensifiers, I think they will be of little use in spotting lobby pot markers. IR needs a temperature difference to create an image. Anything in the water that doesn’t generate or retain heat differently to the water around it will be invisible
 
Hot Property said:
I may take the plunge as a group of sports boat owner friends are keen on doing a night run to poole or lulworth cove from the Hamble

Proposal was to travel in convey at speed which is fraught with dangers in my view.

I'll see if this IR thingy gives enough advance warning of lobster pots other vessels etc.......
Click to expand...

They quote 100 metres range night vision.
 
I had a ' Yukon ' night vision monocular, which while proper 1st generation would seem a lot more serious than the Lidl thing, about £100 some years ago.

Quite useful, but no way on earth any good for travelling at high mobo speeds in the dark.

My monocular packed up after a few months but the supplier had gone bust by then.

I've also tried proper military 4th generation at least nvg's as used in the night vision Harrier GR7 - wonderful kit costing quite a few thousand ( and a short life ) but even with those I wouldn't speed at sea in the dark, the Harrier had a built in Forward Looking Infra Red for flying, the pilots' NVG's were just for peering around.

I suggest a new passage plan ! :)
 
Seajet said:
I had a ' Yukon ' night vision monocular, which while proper 1st generation would seem a lot more serious than the Lidl thing, about £100 some years ago.

Quite useful, but no way on earth any good for travelling at high mobo speeds in the dark.

My monocular packed up after a few months but the supplier had gone bust by then.

I've also tried proper military 4th generation at least nvg's as used in the night vision Harrier GR7 - wonderful kit costing quite a few thousand ( and a short life ) but even with those I wouldn't speed at sea in the dark, the Harrier had a built in Forward Looking Infra Red for flying, the pilots' NVG's were just for peering around.

I suggest a new passage plan ! :)
Click to expand...

Agreed! Displacement speed
going with the tide sounds good to me....
 
Please do not confuse night vision kit which relies on an external (normally IR) illuminator working in conjunction with an image intensifier, with thermal imaging cameras and sights which can discriminate between the temperature of objects and background and display the difference as a recognisable shape.


Travelling in a boat at night and looking for a pot marker would need a powerful IR source and an image intensifier as the pot marker will be at very nearly the same temperature as the sea. However if you wish to follow a lead boat in a convoy, a thermal imaging sight will show up the disturbed water and exhausts.

The range of vision in both is increasing as technology improves. My FLIR thermal sight has a range of about 800m and costs in the shops about £2k.

FWIW the deer poaching gangs on Exmoor and Dartmoor use thermal imaging. That is until they are caught and their kit confiscated.

It is hard to think if a time and place when the LIDL device would be of much use on a boat. Imagine a normal bin- or mon-ocular with a 100 m range and a small angle of vision. The other disadvantage of both types is that their use disables your eye's night adaptation, which takes several minutes to recover.
 
There's a lot of confusion about night vision, mainly thanks to poorly researched and / or written Hollywood stuff - most people don't get the difference between image intensifiers - as in Night Vision Goggles, green image - ot infra red, usually a black & white image.

Typical example was a recent double glazing ad on TV where they show someone using NVG's to spot heat loss !
 
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Seajet said:
There's a lot of confusion about night vision, mainly thanks to poorly researched and / or written Hollywood stuff - most people don't get the difference between image intensifiers - as in Night Vision Goggles, green image - ot infra red, usually a black & white image.
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I have not researched this topic at all. But I'm surprised that the "green image" still applies. It was the case when directly viewing a fluorescent screen. But I thought everything was digitally processed by now, so any colours could be generated. And I thought that was common if viewing IR to show false colours derived from the temperature detected. But no doubt this depends on the class and cost of the device!

Mike.
 
sarabande said:
Please do not confuse night vision kit which relies on an external (normally IR) illuminator working in conjunction with an image intensifier, with thermal imaging cameras and sights which can discriminate between the temperature of objects and background and display the difference as a recognisable shape.

Travelling in a boat at night and looking for a pot marker would need a powerful IR source and an image intensifier as the pot marker will be at very nearly the same temperature as the sea. However if you wish to follow a lead boat in a convoy, a thermal imaging sight will show up the disturbed water and exhausts.
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You appear to be subject to exactly the confusion that you caution against. Image intensifying (II) (also sometimes known as near IR) night vision technology does not depend on on temperature (differential or otherwise). The IR illumination is just that, it provides extra illumination that the device can pick up - apart from wavelength no different from shining a torch to help see things.

sarabande said:
The range of vision in both is increasing as technology improves. My FLIR thermal sight has a range of about 800m and costs in the shops about £2k.
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II systems are really not being developed much these days, however most EO cameras (even consumer ones) now have an appreciable near IR capacity, for instance your mobile phone camera, This is easily illustrated by looking at, for instance, an IR TV control though your mobile, you will see the signal being sent. The restriction in the quality of true TI systems available to the general public is not technological but regulatory as they are ITAR technology.
 
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Very interesting and instructive. :encouragement:

Especially if it reduces anybody's reliance upon cheapjack would-be replicas of very costly, genuinely effective kit.

Isn't it likely that ordinary high-quality binoculars will improve poor-light viewing, better than items like this from Lidl?
 
Jolly good. I just ordered some Bynolyt RNLI binoculars that cost double what the Lidl Jimmy-Bond gadget does. :biggrin-new:
 
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