Night Vision Are these specs acceptible

match308

Sergeant of the Hide
Full Member
Minuteman
Oct 2, 2005
161
26
DFW Tx
Purchased my first PVS-14. Its a Gen 3 Autogated, pinnacle tube. Question is: Are these fine specs acceptable? They don't seem to hinder its useability, but for almost 3K, is this ok? The woodgrain pattern is from the door I used as a white background.
 
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Dude all your circles and wood grain in the picture is a terrible idea. Take a clean image on a white wall. Don't put any stupid circles on shit. We know what were looking
at. For what it's worth I don't see anything that screams out to me. They almost
all have a spec or two somewhere in the image.
 
If you are taking a picture against a white sheet of paper, and at low gain, you should see nothing interesting.

If you crank up the gain, you may see a honey comb pattern, which would be normal.

Typically, you don't see holes or spots in the center of the tube, but you may see them in the outter 2/3-3/3 region of it.

If the tube does not have a great signal to noise ratio, you may see scintillation when you up the gain to full. (I've got one with a 72lpmm center, and a very high signal to noise ratio, and even it shows some scintillation at full gain, of course, that's more applicable to when it's dark, as opposed to a white background.)
 
OP could you try to take a couple more pictures through the tube showing a scene? I am curious if the specs show up that way? Also how are you taking the photo?

Lets talk about spots and specs. The Industry standard classifies a spot as anything .003 inches or larger, as measured on a standard ITT spot chart. We have been using this chart for years and it has allowed us to accurately grade what we are supplying to our customers. Here is a photo of said SPOT chart. This is a view through a PVS-14 set up on a tripod and viewing the chart from the specified distance.

The spot gauge in the image shows a series of spots in an arc over the top of the circle of Zone 1. The left most "spot" starts at .003 and goes .006, .009, .012, .015. What you do is move the spot in the tube to the chart and see just how large it REALLY is. Also what zone its REALLY in.

Anything in the image smaller than .003 is considered a pepper speck and generally, will barely (usually not at all) show in a photograph. The cause of these "pepper specks" is mostly the ends of the fiber optic strands that are not cut perfectly square as the fiber bundles were being made. The do not affect function and are only noticeable if you really look for them. They are however, just like in diamonds a noticeable artifact. If they bother you or not is a personal preference but you will look for a very long time for at tube completely free of them. It has been my experience though that if your doing anything "dynamic" i.e. out using your night vision, you wont see them.

To the OP from the one picture posted, it looks like you have a VERY nice tube.

This is an L3 Omni 8 tube that has one Pepper speck in it.




Even the Olivia Munn tube wasnt perfectly free of pepper specks but you can't see a one of them here.

 
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