NV Binoculars - Red Light

Does Night Vision Binoculars give off any red light.

For example, if you suspect someone is looking at you from inside a car *it's all dark around*, and you see a faint hint of 2 red circles and it appears that he is holding up a set of binoculars.......would night vision binoculars show any traces of red circles that would be the lens.

this thing has got me more spooked than I should be but....

If from 30 feet away, can night vision binoculars be good enough so that the person using them can read the VIN or registration info of the car clearly ?

The binoculars don't give off anything, but many of them are equipped with Near Infrared auxillary
light sources that can be turned off ambient light is inadequate. At night many people are able to see these as a dim red glow, they are actually
very bright in the near infrared spectrum, but the sensitivity of the eye to that part of the spectrum
is very poor.

As to whether or not you can read the VIN or registration information, that is going to depend upon
type of NV gear. With a 1st generation unit, or 1st generation +, (figure about $600), probably not
however the 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation Image intensifiers have better gain, and better resolution.
(2nd Generation would be about $1200, 3rd generation about $2000, 4th generation about $4000).
The big improvement is from 1st to second, and the use of the microchannel plate in place of the tube.

There are some regular Bino's out there that have a red tint to the lens. You will see the red halos if light hits them properly.

NVG's are used all the time to read registrations during surveillance. As for reading the vin number you have to be up on top of the vin plate to get that clarity, and even then some characters are difficult to discern.

If this is a regular thing, and you want to have some fun with him, rig up an IR spotlight in your car, do something to catch his attention, then turn on the light.

heh. Do traffic cameras capture your license plate via infrared? If so you could rig some 5mm infrared leds around your plates to "blind" the cameras?

There is a device which gives off a counter flash of visible light to defeat the "paparazzi" attempts to photograph famous folks in their automobiles by sensing the photo flash. This over-exposes the image and could be used to render traffic cameras ineffective. Cameras in my area use visible flash.

Hmm. Ours dont', at least I've never seen them flash when people run red lights and stuff. They could be just bogus fake ones /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon3.gif

[ QUOTE ]
jsoto said:
this thing has got me more spooked than I should be but....

If from 30 feet away, can night vision binoculars be good enough so that the person using them can read the VIN or registration info of the car clearly ?

[/ QUOTE ]

who are you stalking??