Best Night Vision vs. Darkest Room [video]

I haven't watched the whole video yet, but I own a very high-quality PVS-14. I've mostly solved the depth of field issue for myself with an iris in front of the objective lens.

There is a tradeoff to make between available light and DoF, but outdoors I can turn it to about 1/3 open and see clearly from ~2' to infinity.

I found a well-made iris mechanism on eBay, designed for microscopes. It fits the threads on the objective lens exactly, and has another set of threads on the outside to which a sacrificial lens can be added for protection if desired. I'm really happy with it.

The X27 in the link is a high-ISO (5'000'000) digital system, so it may have lag that could effect people who are wearing it (e.g., motion sickness).

The goggles you see folks wearing on their heads is analog amplification, so has zero lag.

There are use-cases for both.

To each their own. "Black silicon" and other high-sensitivity CMOS cameras are way better in starry nights, from what I understand, but conventional night visions are more useful in moonless/starless nights, as well as poorly lit indoors. Assuming you have any reasons to "operate" under starless skies.

Calling this propaganda is a bit much in my opinion. Of course the military has an interest in creating a video like this but I never felt that this video was an ad.

Derek has always been very ethical about his sponsorships, never going for NordVPN or shitty mobile games but services that promote science (like Nebula or Brilliant).

Absolutely. I always wonder how these videos actually get made. Did the channel reach out to the military, or did some military PR arm reach out to the channel and ask if they were interested in showcasing night vision tech? Hard to imagine anything other than the latter, which is fairly insidious behavior.

Most likely not. SPADs are good for detecting single photons (I have designed electronics for this), but to quench the pixel after every detection you need significant dead-time for the pixel. Single pixel needs to be an array here, size of which defines the dynamic range of the pixel. Each element within the pixel can not be much smaller than the wavelength to be detected. That means you need significant array of arrays to do any meaningful imaging — sensor will be very large.

Define "affordable"?

The cheapest would be an IR camera, a small display, and a lens. Here's a 3D printed kit, with links to parts and communications channels for makers: https://www.tindie.com/products/justcallmekoko/bpnvg-3d-prin...

A step up from that would be the lower end commercial offerings like the Sionyx Aurora: https://www.sionyx.com/collections/aurora-night-vision-camer...

Both of the above really require active illumination to be effective. As long as you're not worried about other people with night vision, that's not a problem.

Above that... it gets expensive and complicated very quickly.

It's confusingly presented in the video, but they already work in the near infrared, up to ~900nm. They're used with IR illuminators and lasers all the time.

There are tubes that work on a wider spectrum, like the Photonis 4G tubes from UV to IR 350-1100nm. But I found them dimmer than the L3Harris in the video.

Infrared is a wide range. Ambient temperature black body radiation (LWIR) is typically detected between 7..14um. Refractive optics that works from there to visible range (380..700nm) is to my knowledge still unsolved problem.

Image intensifier tubes don't care what color the incoming photons carry. Anything within reasonable wavelength/voltage/frequency that can pass and focus on input side of IIT triggers secondary electron release events, a la armor piercing shell causing spalling on an armor plate. Then the released electron hits exit side charged at high voltage and excites good old green or white phosphor paint. Frequency of that release events converts to light intensity on the screen and the user observes it through eyepiece optics.

Standard photomultipliers are single pixel vacuum tube, nightvision IIT devices are hex array of pixels. They are built on microchannel plate technology; a bundle of optical fiber, twisted, impregnated in glass into a sushi roll, silced angled, etched, electroplated, stacked, to create a circular glass plate filled with couple layers of microscopic conical voids, each working to same effect as multi-stage PMTs when charged.

I suppose, in theory, all lights from long-wave IR to X-rays can be all handled by a single IIT tube, but in reality they can't, and thermal cameras that resolves heat images works in a completely different principle; instead of using vacuum tube technology that excite on incoming photons, they receive microscopic changes in temperatures caused by incoming light focused by IR-transparent lenses, projected onto an array of individual heat sensor devices(microbolometers) that are MEMS fabricated on top of typically Sony CMOS sensors.

Combining an IIT with a CMOS camera should be possible and I guess will improve contrast/minimum light level necessary, but the tube already sees near IR that it reasonably can, and also, because the light at the exit/user side of IIT is just luminescence from phosphor, adding heat-sensitive detectors there won't yield much.

IMO, if you just want to maybe buy and use an NVG, videos from (rich/financially irresponsible)gun people such as Hop(Hoplopfheil) or InRangeTV are more brief and potentially useful. Anything beyond, I found on Google(pre-covid).

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHflvwNJ3cs

2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3KftiMHYVU