Quoted By:
Everyone post your tips, tricks, and knowledge about how to best see in the dark, and how to best utilise your scotopic vision.
This includes discussion of lighting and how to best use it, and IR/thermal/nacht vision options.
I'll start:
Your scotopic (night) vision takes about 20mins to reach highly effective performance, and up to an hour to reach peak performance - so it's important that you preserve it!
Facts about your vision that you can use to your advantage:
>your eye has two main types of photoreceptors: cones and rods.
>cones are sensitive to colour and most of your fine detail relies on them, they are NOT sensitive to contrast or movement
>rods are sensitive to contrast and very sensitive to movement, they see ONLY contrast: dark vs. light and never in fine focus.
>cones are grouped in the centre of your retina, directly behind your pupil and lens
>rods are non-existent in the centre of your retina, but are spread around the outside, off-axis from your cornea, making survival possible because it is your peripheral vision that you rely on for reflex if anything suddenly moves in on you
>in scotopic vision your cones fail and you rely entirely on your rods, this is why in low light everything looks grey or black & white
>this also means in the dark anything you try to stare directly at (if you think something is lurking out there in the moonlight) you won't be able to see, you're basically blind to anything you stare at
>look away slightly, using your peripheral (rod) vision and even though you couldn't read a chart you will get more information and immediately identify if something is moving
cont'd
