Thread: A question on your shooting using nv techniques

Originally Posted by blip

So picked up the budget hikmicro monocular and had a play with it when we went out last night. I must be slow to grasp new tech or something as I found myself automatically just going for the spotlight all the time. Wife was with me and she was getting the hang of it quite fast. She was spotting possums to about 50-70m with it and cows out to 150m plus. It was just the budget unit and Im sure more expencive units will be better but for the price and how much we will use it we are more than happy with it. Just need to have a play with the settings a bit more i think

I adjust the brightness and contrast on mine at the start of every hunt. Find an outside animal (dog or cat is good) that you can look at to make sure the settings are suitable for the conditions. Generally I try to go for the lowest brightness and the highest contrast without interference from other warmish objects (which is usually low contrast too).

The other thing to remember is it shows up temperature differential, as opposed to warm objects. So a luke warm thing against cold background will show strongly, but a lukewarm thing against a hot background won't be as apparent. It will also average the total picture so if you are looking at trees agains't a cold sky, it will show the trees as hot. If you can keep as much ground in the viewfinder as possible this will 'cool' the trees down a bit. You do also need to get used to what you are looking at, in leafless trees, possums look like white blobs on white branches.

Also it is interesting to look at vehicles and houses. When you turn on the hot tap the first time (where it initially runs cold) it is interesting to watch the interface between cold and hot, when the hot comes throught the tap.