Astroscope 9350 Night Vision Converter - Nikon

For Sale: Well, Roger thought this was a great idea, and he’s loved playing with it, but it doesn’t rent much and business is business, so the accountants are making him sell it.

The AstroScope 9350 is a modular night vision system that converts your Nikon digital SLR and existing lens into a Generation III night vision device. The 9350 contains a generation III Intensifier Unit and corrective lenses. It mounts between camera and lens, like an oversize teleconverter. The image intensifier is powered directly from the camera, and most camera functions (including lens stabilization) are retained. It requires no set-up, calibration or training.

We recommend that the camera be used in Manual mode with initial settings of 800 ISO, 1/30 second shutter speed, lowest f-stop (wide open aperture), using Manual focus. Autofocus is unreliable in the green light generated by the image intensifier. However, image stabilization, if built into the lens used, is maintained. The unit’s optics are built for a ‘crop’ sensor so a full frame camera, like the D3, is not the best choice.

Note: The Astroscope is U. S. Military grade hardware using very expensive 3rd generation image intensifiers. These units sell for about $6,000 new. They are ‘export controlled’ by the U. S. government and may NOT be taken outside of the United States under any circumstances.

Roger’s Preliminary Take If you’re looking to blow up 11 X 14 prints for your wall, don’t bother. It isn’t going to make razor sharp images, and it doesn’t particularly matter if you have a great lens on the end of it. What it will do is give you a useable, web sized or better image of things that you couldn’t possibly see otherwise. The images of the tables below was taken in a room so dark I couldn’t see anything at all except the LCD on the video recorder (the blown out highlight on the left side of the picture). The outdoor image was on a heavily clouded, moonless night – the two dots of light in the picture are porch lights about half a mile away.

The one thing I have learned is you’re much better off with a medium telephoto lens rather than the wide angle (25mm) I was playing with for these shots.