@ColeSloth@superpope These started off at $130 on ripsites like QVC (where it’s currently $100), and the QVC package included a 32Gb card instead of 64Gb. No spec is given for the card’s speed, and now that I look at the specs, nothing appears to be mentioned about frame rate, so the quality of the video might be chunked down to accommodate the card rather than the card being selected to match the stream speed.
Waitaminute. “Binocular”? Really? All of the images show just one actual lens, and no eyepieces at all; viewing is via the single rectangular screen. That’s not a “binocular” at all, its a binocular-shaped digital camera/monocular with an IR feature, and it’s a bloody damn huge package for that little capability.
Something tells me that I just figured out why these are on Meh.
For anyone else wondering (like I was) how you use these binoculars, throw away your old notion of using the eye cups method! It turns out you use the flat-end side which is actually an LCD screen! This model has a very minimal rubber “sunscreen” which will probably make it hard to view in bright sunlight. Don’t know why whomever does the writeups failed to mention this VERY IMPORTANT information!! Here’s a pic and some pertinent info:
Turns out they at least give a screen size in the specs but without the info I provided above you wouldn’t know what they were referring to:
@MrGoodGuy I found a video on the QVC site; it shows the thing being held at least a foot in front of the user. And since it uses just one optic, it’s not a binocular at all!
@werehatrack Yeah, I suppose one side of the “cups” section is for daytime images and the other for night vision. They are both different as shown in the listing pics.
@MrGoodGuy@werehatrack I’m curious how it goes from two (?) objective lenses to one image on screen/memory card. (Quantum effects as in the double-slit experiment??)
Apparently these sold out on HSN at the $199 price and got decent reviews (according to Google search, but that listing & reviews linked have disappeared from there).
There is at least one YT review of these, but not much in the way of any technical details that I saw.
They are also shown as SOLD OUT on the vivitar.com site, at either 249.99 or 299.99 (different models?) but no real details there either or access to user guide/manual
@MrGoodGuy@phendrick@werehatrack That’s not two objective lenses you are looking at. Only one lens and an IR emitter. It isn’t really correct to call these “night vision”. Real night vision scopes use only available light and amplify it. What these cheap scopes do is us a simple digital camera with the infrared filter removed and a provide an IR light source, much like a flashlight. So the range of what you can see is limited by how far the IR flashlight can reach.
@Kyeh@MrGoodGuy@phendrick@theangryintern Honestly, I don’t think it has a “flagship function”; this thing is more like a small flotilla of leaky coracles trying to pass itself off as a proper boat.
@werehatrack At least there are reviews there. Notably, 70 5-star and 80 1-star. (A lot of the 1’s are of the “I couldn’t figure it out so sent it back” type, and there were several mentions of inadequate instructions on using the controls.)
But I’m not sure those are for the same model as here, as they mention"4K" video, not 5K.
@phendrick Yeah, and theirs comes with a 32Gb card instead of 64. I will note with a heaping portion of cynicism that $25 pocket cameras with claims of 96 megapixels 8K UHD have been popping up on certain direct-from-China sites, and I have to wonder if that “96 megapixels” is 12 interpolated up to 96. Because once it has been written, software is much cheaper to reproduce than a physical product. (It’s not like the glass they’re using will provide that much resolution anyway, and the 3-inch native viewscreen certainly doesn’t have that level of density.)
They don’t even include a simulated night promo photo. That’s how crappy this is. You can probably make this yourself out of raspberry pi and ir camera
Hoo, boy, the more I look, the less I like. “Lens diameter 25mm”. That tells the buyer precisely nothing useful. They do state that the viewing angle is 10º, which approximately equates to a 200mm telephoto lens on an old 35mm film camera, or a 125mm lens on a newer APS-C DSLR. I’m assuming this is at minimum “zoom”.
@werehatrack And just what are they measuring when they claim “18X digital zoom”, given all of the other absurdities present? In the regular-camera world, that would be the equivalent of a zoom from 125mm to 2250mm, which is a focal length so long that trying to use it hand-held is ludicrous (Oh, but there’s a teeny little “tripod” included. How quaint.) I am sorely tempted to grab one just to give it a review roast.
@Limewater Correct! And because the smaller image has many fewer actual pixels, the resolution drops drastically. And no, real technology can’t restore what was never there. AI might take a bad guess and compose a replacement image, but that’s not recreating what would have been present with more image resolution in the sensor and actual optical zoom.
Luke Skywalker called; he wants his macrobinoculars back.
/showme Luke Skywalker on Tattooine using a pair of Vivitar Digital Camera Binoculars with Night Vision
These are confusing. If they are binoculars and a camera, which they clearly aren’t, shouldn’t they have optical zoom in addition to the digital zoom? I was intrigued for a moment, but it really just looks like they put a regular vivitar digital camera in a novelty case to try to sell it for more. Based on it ending up here it looks like it failed.
@chienfou I will say I learned something today, I did not know that there were binoculars with no zoom, I appreciate the education! I am genuinely curious, what is the purpose?
@chienfou I’m using the wrong terminology (googled optical zoom and fixed focal length*), I see what you mean now! I will leave my original reply up in shame.
What I was trying to convey is that the magnification looks to be digital only. If it also had a lens then this would be intriguing.
@chienfou@OON7 Binoculars were first developed and used in the era before optical zoom was a thing; the original ones were literally two small telescopes mounted on a hinge so that they could line up with the user’s eyes properly, with a focus knob that changed the distance for both, and a +/- adjustment on one eyepiece to accommodate the difference in visual capabilities of the two eyes. Optical-zoom binoculars remain rare, and modern optical binoculars use a prism assembly on each side to reduce the physical length of the unit. Wikipedia has details if you’re actually curious.
I looked this up. 96 MP. They don’t tell you that this is upscaled by the processor. The actual sensor is 16MP. No optical zoom. Not even fixed. That means if you zoom in to only 5x, it would streatch the pixels to give you a 96 MP file, but the effective raw image would be 0.64 MP. Meanwhile, my phone has a 50MP sensor with a fixed 5x optical zoom. So if your phone can zoom better than this, then I would skip it unless you really want the night vision.
While it would have made it much more expensive and not meh enough for meh, having all that interior volume was an opportunity to have real optical zoom.
sigh.
As I said in another post, I do want this, but I cannot ju$tify.
For those comparing to the ones sold on QVC, they are a different model. you can see that the button layout is different, as well as technical spec differences (4K vs 5K). That being said, neither looks to be of particularly high quality. I laughed when the QVC spokeswoman showed off the manually rotated “automatic focus” ring. If you’re looking for a similar product with a bit higher quality and true color nighttime capabilities without need for IR (as well as IR augmentation when desired) take a look at the AKASO Seemore 200.
@djsteve My husband has a Canon monocular that’s about one-twentieth (or less) of the size of this thing, uses an eyepiece instead of a flat screen, and has the same actual resolution. It’s about 55mm long and roughly 25x40mm in cross-section, with both video and still capture. It works well for what he needs.
With unit in hand, here are some first impressions.
The camera (It’s Not A Binocular, OK?) is smaller than what I perceived in the photos, and it’s VERY light.
The screen size is small, not quite three inches from corner to corner by my ruler.
Autofocus? We don’t need no steenking autofocus! The small screen size makes accurate manual focus somewhat hit-or-miss, not that it probably matters a great deal given the rest of the unit’s capabilities. The amount of lens-twisting required for anything less than 100 yards away is annoying.
The included 64Gb micro-SD card has no markings showing its speed rating. It just has “64GB” in big letters, and that’s all. Great confidence this inspires not.
The unit refused to power up straight out of the box, so I expected that the battery was at extremely low charge. After less than ten minutes connected to a charger, it powered on and displayed a battery icon that was solid green. The charging light remains red. Great confidence this inspires not also.
The included carrying case does not have room for the included tripod.
As promised, a googly eye has been added on the non-lens side. I’ll find out if that messes up the IR-vision later.
After I’ve had a chance to take it outside and see what it can do, I’ll post more comments. So far, I’m underwhelmed to pretty much the exact degree expected, but then, I’ve been doing photography for 60 years with some reasonably decent kit. This thing is close to perfectly Meh.
The ON/OFF button has to be held down for five seconds to turn the camera on, and it takes a couple of additional seconds for it to boot up enough to display anything besides the splash screen. This is absolutely NOT a camera that’s going to be useful for catching something on the spur of the moment.
With the camera off, if you press the power button for less than five seconds, it becomes confused and will ignore whatever you do to the power button for about ten to fifteen seconds. This is guaranteed to convince some people that it’s broken. (I wasn’t sure, myself.)
The IR light emitter is in the lens-like thing across from the camera lens, which means no googly eyes can be accommodated. I has a sad.
The SD card is a pain to extract without tweezers or a pair of needlenose pliers; it’s in a narrow recess.
The color rendering under IR light is weird; my very blue network cable is suddenly pink in that mode.
@Version_3 Same here. And their website does not admit that firmware updates might exist. This looks like a prime candidate for “why these are on Meh.” I strongly suspect that the buyer was not told that this problem exists. I will also note that the shipping box had a large round sticker stating “AS IS”, which seems like the kind of thing that a remainder broker would slap on when they know they’ve got a 100% defect rate that only disables one feature and not the whole product.
To make matters worse, the visual apparent size of what’s on the screen is not remarkably magnified vs the visual apparent size of what can be seen unaided. Ergo, these things are not really useful as a magnifying monocular either.
As for the IR mode, although it says that there’s a color and a B/W mode that can be selected, the “color” mode renders the entire image in monochromatic magenta. Odd, but not dramatically more useful than black and white.
Also, getting it to swap to and from IR mode can be unresponsive. It acts like a fussy old aunt who is slightly along the road to dementia and can’t process a new command until the previous one has been picked up, scrutinized with a magnifier, enacted with careful deliberation, and then placed into a bitbucket that takes at least a full second to report completion. These cameras should be sold to Ents.
Overall, the more I test the usefulness of this camera, the less useful it becomes.
@Version_3@werehatrack IR illumination doesn’t distinguish between colors on any camera system. It is monochromatic, but some devices offer false coloring of the entire image as a visual aid. When you see incorrect colors on objects, that’s because the lens assembly has the IR filter moved out of the path, but there’s still some normal light on the scene. IR messes with the way sensors register certain colors, which is why most normal cameras contain this filter to maintain color accuracy. The click you typically hear when IR mode is enabled and disabled is the filter being moved in and out of the path.
The rest of the camera’s shenanigans is just likely just bad design choices and poor implementation to keep costs low.
@Version_3 Yeah, that manual. I hate manuals set in four-point type.
Okay, with the Gyro turned off, the digital zoom “works”, BUT… (1) it is SLOOOOOW. I’ve seen faster-moving glaciers. and (2) the buttons are backwards from what one would reasonably expect. The button in front zooms BACK, and the one in back zooms FORWARD.
At full “zoom”, the lack of resolution of the image sensor is fully on display, and the color rendering goes muted.
Whoever wrote the specs for this has clearly never used a camera. The single uncommon thing this provides, fully manual focus, means that I actually have a use for it, sort of. But a cheap digital SLR would do it better, and there are some around. (And I have a very much not-cheap one as well. I need to get out and use it.)
@werehatrack Here’s a fun use case for an IR camera that I hadn’t considered. They’re generally more sensitive when the IR filter is switched out and can pick up certain objects that may be too faint in the visible spectrum. I might try this with one hooked up to a power bank overnight and see what the results look like. Who knows, I might be able to catch a UFO as well!
@werehatrack To be fair, the sensor can still pick up colors in IR mode, but the IR illuminator does not contain the wavelengths needed to differentiate between visible colors. IR color mode may just be a mode where the IR filter is moved out and the illuminator is turned off. This improves image sensitivity at the cost of color accuracy when there is ambient light, which can still be useful if you just want to see that something is there and don’t care if it’s a red or blue or green goblin .
@kuoh That’s not what this does. It just renders everything in magenta-pink-white, basically a magenta monochrome instead of b/w monochrome. Calling that “color” is disingenuous. Yes, it’s “not black and white”. But it’s also not a spectrum at all. I wish I still had my old IR filter from back in my film days; I’d test this to see if the CCD reports IR when not in IR mode. I have a thermal imaging camera which uses false color to indicate apparent surface temps, not the same thing at all. (It’s really handy for electronics troubleshooting; spotting a hot component is often half the battle.)
@werehatrack Yeah, I wasn’t sure if you were referring to a scene color palette, like fake green night vision or some sort of simulated thermal. An “IR” camera would not be able to distinguish between surface temperatures like a thermal camera. It just has a sensor that has some sensitivity in a narrow IR wavelength and sees reflections from objects lit by the IR “flashlight”. It is usually just a normal color image sensor with limited IR sensitivity which can do double duty with the use of a selectable IR filter.
If you feel like testing your camera for thermal capabilities, try turning off the IR illuminator or covering it with something IR opaque if there isn’t an off option. It will likely not pick up anything when in total darkness, unless the object is hot enough to already be glowing in the visible spectrum. If you want a real thermal camera for practical uses like checking home insulation, electronic, mechanical hot/cold spots or even amateur volcano spotting in LA subways, these have come down a lot in price and there are frequently deals for basic ones under $100 and slightly more advanced ones with visible image fusion modes for around $150.
@kuoh As mentioned, I have a false-color thermal imaging camera that I use for diagnostic troubleshooting. It also permits overlaying a muted transparent thermal image over the visible-spectrum one as well, but I’ve never needed that.
@grohman360 Be aware that these units are less responsive to commands than the typical supertanker. Inputting several button-pushes quickly can result in the whole thing going catatonic while it tries to sort things out. That said, I would not be surprised if some of them are genuinely broken in one or more respects.
Specs
Product: Vivitar Digital Camera Binoculars with Night Vision & Accessory Kit
Model: VIVCVIR15
Condition: New
What’s Included?
Warranty
90 days
Estimated Delivery
Thursday, Jul 30 - Monday, Aug 3
I don’t see myself buying this…
@chienfou hold your phone up to a mirror while you buy it.
I really can’t think of a use for this besides upgrading to be able to record while perving on my hot neighbor.
@goldnectar Night mode is infrared. How hot are the neighbors?
@ergomeh @goldnectar The burning question that infrared can answer
A 64gb micro SD costs like $25 all on its own, although we don’t know the speed. Still…
@superpope Going off of the “quality” most vivitar things seems to be, I’m guessing the card is very much, hot garbage.
Too bad it’s the lane kind of night vision where there’s a bright IR light it needs to use, and not the real night vision like the military uses.
@ColeSloth @superpope These started off at $130 on ripsites like QVC (where it’s currently $100), and the QVC package included a 32Gb card instead of 64Gb. No spec is given for the card’s speed, and now that I look at the specs, nothing appears to be mentioned about frame rate, so the quality of the video might be chunked down to accommodate the card rather than the card being selected to match the stream speed.
@superpope It’s probably an el-crappo 64Gb card, but I am NOT complaining.
Huh. I talked myself out of it when I remembered that my trail cam does IR as “night vision”.
Raise your hand if you knew that cat fur markings don’t show up the same under night-IR and visible light…
@werehatrack so how do they show up?
@Kidsandliz @werehatrack precisely when they mean to
Waitaminute. “Binocular”? Really? All of the images show just one actual lens, and no eyepieces at all; viewing is via the single rectangular screen. That’s not a “binocular” at all, its a binocular-shaped digital camera/monocular with an IR feature, and it’s a bloody damn huge package for that little capability.
Something tells me that I just figured out why these are on Meh.
@werehatrack See my post below
@werehatrack No kidding! Binocular implies stereo vision for 3-D depth perception. False advertising!
For anyone else wondering (like I was) how you use these binoculars, throw away your old notion of using the eye cups method! It turns out you use the flat-end side which is actually an LCD screen! This model has a very minimal rubber “sunscreen” which will probably make it hard to view in bright sunlight. Don’t know why whomever does the writeups failed to mention this VERY IMPORTANT information!! Here’s a pic and some pertinent info:
Turns out they at least give a screen size in the specs but without the info I provided above you wouldn’t know what they were referring to:
@MrGoodGuy I found a video on the QVC site; it shows the thing being held at least a foot in front of the user. And since it uses just one optic, it’s not a binocular at all!
@werehatrack Yeah, I suppose one side of the “cups” section is for daytime images and the other for night vision. They are both different as shown in the listing pics.
@MrGoodGuy @werehatrack I’m curious how it goes from two (?) objective lenses to one image on screen/memory card. (Quantum effects as in the double-slit experiment??)
Apparently these sold out on HSN at the $199 price and got decent reviews (according to Google search, but that listing & reviews linked have disappeared from there).
There is at least one YT review of these, but not much in the way of any technical details that I saw.
They are also shown as SOLD OUT on the vivitar.com site, at either 249.99 or 299.99 (different models?) but no real details there either or access to user guide/manual
@MrGoodGuy @phendrick @werehatrack “Sold out” might just mean remaindered to Meh.
@MrGoodGuy @phendrick
It doesn’t. It has one lens, that’s all; this is a monocular in a binocular-shaped casing.
@MrGoodGuy If this is a NIGHT VISION device, why is the faked preview image on the LCD a BROAD DAYLIGHT beach scene? Make it make sense!
@MrGoodGuy @phendrick @werehatrack according to the product manual on qvc. The right “lens” is actually an IR flashlight. Definitely odd packaging.
@PooltoyWolf On the home page and the specs it mentions that it “works Day or Night”. It has an infrared light that allows Night vision.
@Kyeh @MrGoodGuy @phendrick @werehatrack Could also mean that a new version is about to be released so they want to get rid of the old ones.
@MrGoodGuy @phendrick @werehatrack That’s not two objective lenses you are looking at. Only one lens and an IR emitter. It isn’t really correct to call these “night vision”. Real night vision scopes use only available light and amplify it. What these cheap scopes do is us a simple digital camera with the infrared filter removed and a provide an IR light source, much like a flashlight. So the range of what you can see is limited by how far the IR flashlight can reach.
@MrGoodGuy I just figured they’d want to advertise its flagship function, heh.
@MrGoodGuy @PooltoyWolf I think it’s less of a flagship and more of a canoe.
@MrGoodGuy @phendrick @theangryintern @werehatrack Maybe.
@MrGoodGuy @phendrick @theangryintern @werehatrack Maybe so
@Kyeh @MrGoodGuy @phendrick @theangryintern Honestly, I don’t think it has a “flagship function”; this thing is more like a small flotilla of leaky coracles trying to pass itself off as a proper boat.
No thanks, I will pass!
QVC’s page for this; they wanted $100 for it.
https://www.qvc.com/qvc.product.E330732.html
@werehatrack At least there are reviews there. Notably, 70 5-star and 80 1-star. (A lot of the 1’s are of the “I couldn’t figure it out so sent it back” type, and there were several mentions of inadequate instructions on using the controls.)
But I’m not sure those are for the same model as here, as they mention"4K" video, not 5K.
@phendrick Yeah, and theirs comes with a 32Gb card instead of 64. I will note with a heaping portion of cynicism that $25 pocket cameras with claims of 96 megapixels 8K UHD have been popping up on certain direct-from-China sites, and I have to wonder if that “96 megapixels” is 12 interpolated up to 96. Because once it has been written, software is much cheaper to reproduce than a physical product. (It’s not like the glass they’re using will provide that much resolution anyway, and the 3-inch native viewscreen certainly doesn’t have that level of density.)
OTGH, I actually know someone with tunnelvision issues who might find it useful. Maybe. Probably not, because it’s so bloody big.
They don’t even include a simulated night promo photo. That’s how crappy this is. You can probably make this yourself out of raspberry pi and ir camera
Hoo, boy, the more I look, the less I like. “Lens diameter 25mm”. That tells the buyer precisely nothing useful. They do state that the viewing angle is 10º, which approximately equates to a 200mm telephoto lens on an old 35mm film camera, or a 125mm lens on a newer APS-C DSLR. I’m assuming this is at minimum “zoom”.
@werehatrack And just what are they measuring when they claim “18X digital zoom”, given all of the other absurdities present? In the regular-camera world, that would be the equivalent of a zoom from 125mm to 2250mm, which is a focal length so long that trying to use it hand-held is ludicrous (Oh, but there’s a teeny little “tripod” included. How quaint.) I am sorely tempted to grab one just to give it a review roast.
Heh. Mission accepted. And the orderbot clearly knows what I’m up to; the order number is cruel-pretentious-heart.
/giphy cruel pretentious heart
@werehatrack I would buy one if I had the money to blow. Sadly, I do not.
@werehatrack Digital zoom is cropping the image down and then blowing up that smaller image to take up the full frame.
@Limewater Correct! And because the smaller image has many fewer actual pixels, the resolution drops drastically. And no, real technology can’t restore what was never there. AI might take a bad guess and compose a replacement image, but that’s not recreating what would have been present with more image resolution in the sensor and actual optical zoom.
Luke Skywalker called; he wants his macrobinoculars back.
/showme Luke Skywalker on Tattooine using a pair of Vivitar Digital Camera Binoculars with Night Vision
@ArmchairGamer Here’s the image you requested for “Luke Skywalker on Tattooine using a pair of Vivitar Digital Camera Binoculars with Night Vision”
@ArmchairGamer Came here to say this.
@ArmchairGamer @mediocrebot Thank you for doing this. You mind my read.
These are confusing. If they are binoculars and a camera, which they clearly aren’t, shouldn’t they have optical zoom in addition to the digital zoom? I was intrigued for a moment, but it really just looks like they put a regular vivitar digital camera in a novelty case to try to sell it for more. Based on it ending up here it looks like it failed.
@OON7
I have several pairs of binoculars that are fixed focal length without zoom…
@chienfou I will say I learned something today, I did not know that there were binoculars with no zoom, I appreciate the education! I am genuinely curious, what is the purpose?
@chienfou I’m using the wrong terminology (googled optical zoom and fixed focal length*), I see what you mean now!
I will leave my original reply up in shame.
What I was trying to convey is that the magnification looks to be digital only. If it also had a lens then this would be intriguing.
@OON7 Form does NOT follow function in this case. From is the decoration.
@chienfou @OON7 Binoculars were first developed and used in the era before optical zoom was a thing; the original ones were literally two small telescopes mounted on a hinge so that they could line up with the user’s eyes properly, with a focus knob that changed the distance for both, and a +/- adjustment on one eyepiece to accommodate the difference in visual capabilities of the two eyes. Optical-zoom binoculars remain rare, and modern optical binoculars use a prism assembly on each side to reduce the physical length of the unit. Wikipedia has details if you’re actually curious.
I didn’t see this coming…
I looked this up. 96 MP. They don’t tell you that this is upscaled by the processor. The actual sensor is 16MP. No optical zoom. Not even fixed. That means if you zoom in to only 5x, it would streatch the pixels to give you a 96 MP file, but the effective raw image would be 0.64 MP. Meanwhile, my phone has a 50MP sensor with a fixed 5x optical zoom. So if your phone can zoom better than this, then I would skip it unless you really want the night vision.
@sinimsdp I’m assuming night vision will not help me find it in the dark?
16x digital zoom! I get to zoom in on my pixels?! This really blows my flip phone camera out of the water
@tentalces1349 I assume you didn’t really want to leave your flip phone in the water…
I honestly DO want this. The fact it is one camera means I can put a googly eye on the faux lens …
/showme Anthropomorphized goat using a pair of Vivitar Digital Camera Binoculars with with one lens covered by a googly eye.
@cfg83 Here’s the image you requested for “Anthropomorphized goat using a pair of Vivitar Digital Camera Binoculars with with one lens cover…”
@cfg83 @mediocrebot Okay, I’ve got stick-on googly eyes big enough to put on the one I ordered, and it shall be done.
@mediocrebot @werehatrack
While it would have made it much more expensive and not meh enough for meh, having all that interior volume was an opportunity to have real optical zoom.
sigh.
As I said in another post, I do want this, but I cannot ju$tify.
Does meh have a lotto … a mehtto perhaps?
@cfg83 Doesn’t the somewhat regular IRK offering count as a lotto?
You know, one chance in umpteen of getting something worthwhile?
@phendrick Of course, how could I forget.
/showme Meh giving me a 25% coupon off the Vivitar Digital Camera Binoculars
@rmsinclair2 Here’s the image you requested for “Meh giving me a 25% coupon off the Vivitar Digital Camera Binoculars
”
@mediocrebot you gave me an expired coupon!
@mediocrebot @rmsinclair2 love that expiration date.
@rmsinclair2
As “they” say … the devil is in the details…
@mediocrebot @rmsinclair2 I think that was the plan all along.
For those comparing to the ones sold on QVC, they are a different model. you can see that the button layout is different, as well as technical spec differences (4K vs 5K). That being said, neither looks to be of particularly high quality. I laughed when the QVC spokeswoman showed off the manually rotated “automatic focus” ring. If you’re looking for a similar product with a bit higher quality and true color nighttime capabilities without need for IR (as well as IR augmentation when desired) take a look at the AKASO Seemore 200.
@djsteve My husband has a Canon monocular that’s about one-twentieth (or less) of the size of this thing, uses an eyepiece instead of a flat screen, and has the same actual resolution. It’s about 55mm long and roughly 25x40mm in cross-section, with both video and still capture. It works well for what he needs.
With unit in hand, here are some first impressions.
After I’ve had a chance to take it outside and see what it can do, I’ll post more comments. So far, I’m underwhelmed to pretty much the exact degree expected, but then, I’ve been doing photography for 60 years with some reasonably decent kit. This thing is close to perfectly Meh.
More notes.
There will be more notes.
@werehatrack were you able to get the zoom to work? Any time I hold those buttons, it says “Digital Zoom is temporarily unavailable.”
@Version_3 Same here. And their website does not admit that firmware updates might exist. This looks like a prime candidate for “why these are on Meh.” I strongly suspect that the buyer was not told that this problem exists. I will also note that the shipping box had a large round sticker stating “AS IS”, which seems like the kind of thing that a remainder broker would slap on when they know they’ve got a 100% defect rate that only disables one feature and not the whole product.
To make matters worse, the visual apparent size of what’s on the screen is not remarkably magnified vs the visual apparent size of what can be seen unaided. Ergo, these things are not really useful as a magnifying monocular either.
As for the IR mode, although it says that there’s a color and a B/W mode that can be selected, the “color” mode renders the entire image in monochromatic magenta. Odd, but not dramatically more useful than black and white.
Also, getting it to swap to and from IR mode can be unresponsive. It acts like a fussy old aunt who is slightly along the road to dementia and can’t process a new command until the previous one has been picked up, scrutinized with a magnifier, enacted with careful deliberation, and then placed into a bitbucket that takes at least a full second to report completion. These cameras should be sold to Ents.
Overall, the more I test the usefulness of this camera, the less useful it becomes.
@Version_3 @werehatrack IR illumination doesn’t distinguish between colors on any camera system. It is monochromatic, but some devices offer false coloring of the entire image as a visual aid. When you see incorrect colors on objects, that’s because the lens assembly has the IR filter moved out of the path, but there’s still some normal light on the scene. IR messes with the way sensors register certain colors, which is why most normal cameras contain this filter to maintain color accuracy. The click you typically hear when IR mode is enabled and disabled is the filter being moved in and out of the path.
The rest of the camera’s shenanigans is just likely just bad design choices and poor implementation to keep costs low.
KuoH
@werehatrack I had forgotten that it actually came with a manual. Zoom is disabled when GyroRSC is on in the menu. I turned it off, and zoom works.
@Version_3 Yeah, that manual. I hate manuals set in four-point type.
Okay, with the Gyro turned off, the digital zoom “works”, BUT… (1) it is SLOOOOOW. I’ve seen faster-moving glaciers. and (2) the buttons are backwards from what one would reasonably expect. The button in front zooms BACK, and the one in back zooms FORWARD.
At full “zoom”, the lack of resolution of the image sensor is fully on display, and the color rendering goes muted.
Whoever wrote the specs for this has clearly never used a camera. The single uncommon thing this provides, fully manual focus, means that I actually have a use for it, sort of. But a cheap digital SLR would do it better, and there are some around. (And I have a very much not-cheap one as well. I need to get out and use it.)
I didn’t initially notice that the “AS IS” label on the outer box was from the Home Shopping Network, but there it is:
@kuoh I think it’s telling that the camera’s docs say there’s a “color” mode for IR at all.
@werehatrack Here’s a fun use case for an IR camera that I hadn’t considered. They’re generally more sensitive when the IR filter is switched out and can pick up certain objects that may be too faint in the visible spectrum. I might try this with one hooked up to a power bank overnight and see what the results look like. Who knows, I might be able to catch a UFO as well!
KuoH
@werehatrack To be fair, the sensor can still pick up colors in IR mode, but the IR illuminator does not contain the wavelengths needed to differentiate between visible colors. IR color mode may just be a mode where the IR filter is moved out and the illuminator is turned off. This improves image sensitivity at the cost of color accuracy when there is ambient light, which can still be useful if you just want to see that something is there and don’t care if it’s a red or blue or green goblin .
KuoH
@kuoh That’s not what this does. It just renders everything in magenta-pink-white, basically a magenta monochrome instead of b/w monochrome. Calling that “color” is disingenuous. Yes, it’s “not black and white”. But it’s also not a spectrum at all. I wish I still had my old IR filter from back in my film days; I’d test this to see if the CCD reports IR when not in IR mode. I have a thermal imaging camera which uses false color to indicate apparent surface temps, not the same thing at all. (It’s really handy for electronics troubleshooting; spotting a hot component is often half the battle.)
@werehatrack Yeah, I wasn’t sure if you were referring to a scene color palette, like fake green night vision or some sort of simulated thermal. An “IR” camera would not be able to distinguish between surface temperatures like a thermal camera. It just has a sensor that has some sensitivity in a narrow IR wavelength and sees reflections from objects lit by the IR “flashlight”. It is usually just a normal color image sensor with limited IR sensitivity which can do double duty with the use of a selectable IR filter.
If you feel like testing your camera for thermal capabilities, try turning off the IR illuminator or covering it with something IR opaque if there isn’t an off option. It will likely not pick up anything when in total darkness, unless the object is hot enough to already be glowing in the visible spectrum. If you want a real thermal camera for practical uses like checking home insulation, electronic, mechanical hot/cold spots or even amateur volcano spotting in LA subways, these have come down a lot in price and there are frequently deals for basic ones under $100 and slightly more advanced ones with visible image fusion modes for around $150.
KuoH
@kuoh
ISWYDT…
@kuoh As mentioned, I have a false-color thermal imaging camera that I use for diagnostic troubleshooting. It also permits overlaying a muted transparent thermal image over the visible-spectrum one as well, but I’ve never needed that.
they will turn on and then lock up and I cant do anything cant even turn them off and restart??? this doesn’t look like it was a good purchase
@grohman360
Hit up customer service. Link is in the top bar as a drop down when you click the “what is meh” button
@grohman360 Be aware that these units are less responsive to commands than the typical supertanker. Inputting several button-pushes quickly can result in the whole thing going catatonic while it tries to sort things out. That said, I would not be surprised if some of them are genuinely broken in one or more respects.
I received a used pair! Came with ‘As Is’ written in the box and all accessories are opened. I’m probably missing some too. Buyer beware! Garbage!