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Night vision binoculars are devices normally used for hunting and wild life research, as well as for security and military objectives.
There are two technologies available today:
- Infrared - This kind of night vision binoculars detects corporal heat, and because of that, they are especially useful for detecting of people and animals.
- Light Intensifiers - This kind of night vision binoculars gathers small amounts of environmental light and it expands it to the maximum possible. These are the kind that are used more frequently and also most accessible the public in general.
You can also find night vision binoculars technology in monocular devices, which are those used with a single eye. Also they receive the name of telescopic sights, since rifle or firearm mounts usually have them installed on to make a person able to shoot to the objective in the dark. For that reason they are used mostly to hunt and for military or police reasons.
Night vision binoculars provide a wide radius of vision and can be used fixed to the user face as if they were a mask, even though there are hand held models.
Some other uses for night vision binoculars include night time reconnaissance and espionage since they provide great capabilities in dark and low light situations.
Some surveillance and monitoring cameras also use the technology that is found in night vision binoculars, projecting images in a monitor.
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Generations
Depending on the use that you might want to give to these devices, one generation can offer better relation cost/quality than another one:
- Zero Generation. These night vision binoculars were secretly developed using infrared technology at the beginning for military purposes exclusively.
- First Generation. Having the lowest resolution of this type of technology, night vision binoculars were the first devices with capabilities of light intensification. Nowadays, they are used mostly for wild life seeking, hunting and nocturnal fishing, as well as for home security situations.
- Second Generation. In this generation we find night vision binoculars oriented to meet professionals, police and enthusiastic forces requirements, which are willing to invest a little more money to be able to enjoy a higher quality of images provided by this kind of equipments.
- Third Generation. These night vision binoculars are mostly used in numerous armies, and since they provide superior technology, they can get very expensive.
Night vision binoculars are normally found as a very light equipment and simple to use one. They usually have two tubes with high precision optical devices that allow intensifying light in order to provide a very clear image. When used in combination of an infrared illuminator, they allow a user to see in the total darkness, allowing the exploring the most dark places imagined.
Some models of night vision binoculars come with a head support ideal for tactical operations, rescue maneuvers, observation and monitoring or handling of evasive vehicles and persons as well, giving freedom to a person to use both hands freely for other purposes as needed.
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Color of images viewed in night vision binoculars
The majority of night vision binoculars use an image intensifier in order to convert a weak light of the visible spectrum and infrared to visible light to the human eye. This means that most night vision binoculars will display a green image, because the maximum sensitivity of human color vision is about 555 nanometers, thus the green color is displayed to get the most out of the equipment. Some others, however, may display a black and white image.
Keep in mind that image intensifiers are vacuum tube devices that amplify visible light image so that a weak scene can be viewed by a camera or the eye, and good equipments will try to show the best image obtained in a way that humans can determine what they are looking through night vision binoculars.
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Other equipment
There are other types of devices that provide artificial night vision such as cameras that are portable enough to be held with the hands or head mounted to eye level. Some of these equipments are camcorders and cameras that can capture videos and images, while those similar to glasses are used only for viewing.
Some of these equipments amplify light and various others perceive only infrared radiations. In fact, the most common technique used is to amplify the normal and visible spectrum and just after that, the near infrared. These include light sources invisible to the human eye in near-infrared frequencies.
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