Thermal night blindness ???

[Overlay]

Turned out a good thread this one. Makes you look at the progress in such a relative short time

I’ve tried other Nv of all persuasions the common denominator is the tolerance of individual sight, going to start with the photon which was my breakthrough in night vision, I can remember not wanting to do a freehand shot because when you come away from the scope you could lose your balance because of the dark eye, compared to now particularly with bino type more finesse in the unit and personal settings we are miles up the road in improvement it wasn’t that many years ago when it all started

I had a photon on a mount and clamped in the truck and wired to a 8” 12v black and white screen with an IR on flood on a tilt and pan to scan a field for foxes and rabbits alike and it was a massive game changer matched on the rifle the same photon and IR tweaked into your range of shot and 21/2 buckets of batteries non rechargeable at that
Halycion days
Equipment and knowledge has had phenomenal improvement, where do we go for the next improve already have ballistic calc reticule advanced NV and rangefinders and best thing we have is some very excellent gurus who have grown with and support it all.
The support shooters and the gurus have given to all the different makes is unbelievable

Very rare commodity to find phenomenal growth and product quality go hand in hand and still looking to advance

 

[RETIC80]

Use white hot and the opposite eye to what your using to spot with, open, I’ve done this for years it works well, it’s a bit weird to start with but it soon becomes normal and shutting the other eye seems odd!

 

[Cyres]

Use with none shooting eye and turn the brightness down as low as possible. Takes a while to adjust to now I find it alien to try and use my XQ38 with my R eye.
D

 

[Blackwood Outdoors]

Dual display units reduce eye fatigue dramatically from prolonged viewing, plus there more immersive to view through. Downside is extra weight and size.

 

[Somerley]

Spot left eye shoot right eye brightness turned down to minimum usable on white hot works for me

Exactly this ^^^^

 

[DVS1]

Interesting thread!

I spot and shoot with left eye leaving right eye to retain its natural night vision.

After spotting or shooting if I close my left eye then I can see better than when I close my right eye and there's definitive degradation in detail. Its interesting to hear of others with opposite effects.

An evenings chance meet with Brock put me onto this as when I removed the nv spotter from my eye I couldn't see the fence I had to leap over to avoid Mr Brook and his attitude. Fortunately Brock chose flight instead of fight!

 

[Len the dog]

The OP doesn’t state whether he is shooting through glass or using NV/thermal, this makes all the difference.
If shooting through glass then you would use a monocular on the opposite eye so as to retain the shooting eye’s low light sensitivity.
If shooting with NV/thermal then use the monocular on the same eye to retain the sensitivity in the other eye for walking around at night, otherwise having an illuminated screen in front of both eyes will leave you stumbling around like Joe Biden on a stage.

I’m left handed but shoot right handed (right master eye), so carry the thermal in my left hand but hold it over my right eye, therefore my right eye then loses sensitivity but that doesn’t matter because it is then looking at the screen within the NV. My left eye is unaffected so I’m able to walk around with the minimum of moonlight.
Binoculars will reduce the sensitivity in both eyes equally but this won’t be noticeable because there’s nothing to reference to, but they are still compromised nonetheless.

 

[Pellet Pinger]

The OP doesn’t state whether he is shooting through glass or using NV/thermal, this makes all the difference.
If shooting through glass then you would use a monocular on the opposite eye so as to retain the shooting eye’s low light sensitivity.
If shooting with NV/thermal then use the monocular on the same eye to retain the sensitivity in the other eye for walking around at night, otherwise having an illuminated screen in front of both eyes will leave you stumbling around like Joe Biden on a stage.

I’m left handed but shoot right handed (right master eye), so carry the thermal in my left hand but hold it over my right eye, therefore my right eye then loses sensitivity but that doesn’t matter because it is then looking at the screen within the NV. My left eye is unaffected so I’m able to walk around with the minimum of moonlight.
Binoculars will reduce the sensitivity in both eyes equally but this won’t be noticeable because there’s nothing to reference to, but they are still compromised nonetheless.

This

 

[JTO]

You are looking at a screen which is brighter than the night around you. Your pupils will contract and that's it, you are 'night blind'. Monocular or binocular makes no difference. Only with a binocular you may not notice it as much as both eyes are equally affected.

Just about sums it up.

 

[Hunters moon]

The rough science behind it is that your retina is made up of rods and cones. The rods contain rhodopsin, this pigment is extreme light sensitive and is responsible for "night vision". Exposing rhodopsin to bright light basically bleaches it or breaks up down for up to half an hour. This is the cause of the night blindness we experience if we get exposed to bright objects after dark.

Very interesting.. I remember that from biology.

 

[Hunters moon]

Thinking of swapping out a thermal monocular for thermal binos - am mainly out on foot and use the thermal for scanning. Concerned about night vision blindness which i only get in one eye currently from the monocular - can anyone confirm or deny the problem would be in both eyes for thermal binoculars???

Just recently acquired a set of thermal binos and noticed eye fatigue not so much but they weigh more than a monocular and more light shines out of them as two tubes! Always used white hot so defo less bright, tend to keep the brightness down anyway, defo prefer binos..