Thermal monoculars - anybody using them? (1 Viewer)

[opisska]

This.concept has the problem that you would need to have it on a tripod to work, because with the camera it's too heavy to just keep it on target while not looking through it. Or you would need to blindly push the shutter on the camera while looking through the IR and hope, but how would you focus? But for the purpose of the original question, either laser or a sight should work fine to get a preliminary location and then search with normal binos, I presume they are not looking to do this in th depth of the night,.but more in twilight?

I just wanted to reiterate that matching the IR image to the visual one without any such aid is really hard, sometimes the world looks really different in IR.

 

[wllmspd]

In darkness the “visual” view is pretty monochromatic (humanDark adaption and image intensification) and so many animals that have good camouflage And are not moving become harder to spot. Thermal is a revelation for finding things.

Peter

 

[jurek]

Switching from IR to a normal view is not that hard for me, the same as switching from binoculars to a normal scope. The key is to look at shapes of branches or bushes around.

But I agree that a laser pointer mounted to the thermal could be handy when several people look for a bird. Which makes me wonder - why bird tour guides don't have laser pointers mounted at their bins? On a bird tour, there could be a sum of several hours spend in a stressful way, when the guide tries to point birds to the clients, and the clients struggle to see them before they flee.

 

[edenwatcher]

Out with my Pulsar Axion Key XM22 last weekend I was able to pick out skylark (when only the head was showing) and reed bunting amongst grasses, along with jack snipe. This model is x2 magnification as standard which has advantages and disadvantages. I think it makes it harder to interpret what you are seeing when you switch to bins.

Rob

 

[androidvireo]

Switching from IR to a normal view is not that hard for me, the same as switching from binoculars to a normal scope. The key is to look at shapes of branches or bushes around.

But I agree that a laser pointer mounted to the thermal could be handy when several people look for a bird. Which makes me wonder - why bird tour guides don't have laser pointers mounted at their bins? On a bird tour, there could be a sum of several hours spend in a stressful way, when the guide tries to point birds to the clients, and the clients struggle to see them before they flee.

Could there be an issue with the laser dazzling the birds? I know some guides will use pointers to indicate what tree a bird is in, but usually not point right at it.

 

[jurek]

Could there be an issue with the laser dazzling the birds? I know some guides will use pointers to indicate what tree a bird is in, but usually not point right at it.

Very unlikely. The laser beam will fall a bit to the side of the bird. And all the animal needs to do is to close its eyes or turn the head. This is how those few animals which bother about being spotlighted for the longer time (wildcats, genets) sometimes react.

Note, IMPORTANT: shining laser beam at the thermal lens will damage it. So would pointing it at the Sun.

 

[wllmspd]

I wouldn’t think a laser would do any damage as it’s just a tiny source of heat. The system is designed to focus 10micron wavelength radiation and most decent systems use germanium lenses that are opaque to light below 1700nm (Thorlabs webpage).

Peter

 

[jurek]

That was written in the manual. For obvious reasons, I did not check it.