Does Digital Night Vision Work in Daylight?

Digital night vision does work during the day, however, some devices have a lens cap that you have to put on with a tiny hole in the middle so that not too much light comes into the objective lens and gets registered by the camera or the sensor. Other devices have the ability to switch between daylight, which is then represented with daylight colours and then you can switch them over to night vision mode, which then turns it into black and white, or green and white.

Yes they do work during the day. However unless you have a device that switches to colour (which the vast majority of them now do, ie. Pulsar Digex C50) you wouldn’t want to use it during the day unless you have to, because you’ll be limited to two colours and the spectrum in-between. Which gives you less information than if you were to just use your binoculars and a day scope. So you are basically worse off than just using your day scope.

In summary, digital night vision devices do work during the day. Please ensure if you want to use them during the day that you buy the device, that also has the ability to show coloured imagery during the day.

Does Thermal Imaging work in Daylight?

Can thermal imaging be used during the day? Because thermal imagers (ie. Pulsar, InfiRay, Conotech, Hikmicro) are not affected by light, they are only affected by heat radiation, so then in the darkness of night or the brightness of day, neither of these affect the device and how it performs.

What is affected is the temperature of your surroundings.  So at night time everything is cool and the heat of the animals and the objects you’re targeting are highlighted. But during the day, the sun will heat up everything around you, so downed trees, tree stumps, ant hills, and rocks, all heat up to a similar temperature and you get a lot of false positives.

You wouldn’t believe how many times we’ve been out there hunting hot rocks! Our rule is, if it hasn’t moved in 30 seconds, move on, it’s a rock!