In the movie GoldenEye (1995), Xenia Onatopp (played by dutch actress Famke Janssen), drives a red...
Pysis Night Vision Digital Monocular in GoldenEye


In the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye, Pierce Brosnan as Bond uses an MI6 issued digital camera / monocular to take photos of Xenia Onatopp and the speedboat that takes her to the Manticore Yacht, from his viewpoint at the Fort Antoine Theatre. The device is a Pysis night vision monocular.
The Pysis was designed in 1992/1993, by members of Pyser-SGI (www.pyser-sgi.com), one of the world’s leading manufacturers of night vision products. In 1994, the Bond production team approached the company and requested a high tech monocular for 007 to use in the movie. They selected the Pysis, a simple gen 1 image intensifier giving a green/black monochrome image only. The Pysis was superseded about 10 years later by a new gen 2 device (designed by the same team) called PNP-M which is is now available with gen 2 and 3 technology and is still a world-leader in its field of night vision monoculars.
In the movie GoldenEye, the device is capable of more than just a night vision monocular: Bond takes photos with it which he can send and later print out in his Aston Martin DB5 with the built-in Alpine 7817R CD Tuner which acted as a communication device and colour printer/fax.
From Wikipedia: A monocular is a modified refracting telescope used to magnify the images of distant objects by passing light through a series of lenses and sometimes prisms; the use of prisms results in a lightweight telescope. Volume and weight are less than half those of binoculars of similar optical properties, making it easy to carry. Monoculars produce 2-dimensional images, while binoculars add perception of depth (3 dimensions).
A Pysis monocular can be rented as a prop at Foxtrot Productions.
Comments
It doesn't really look like the one used in the movie, but Sony just announced binoculars with built on camera (Link show official press release):
http://presscentre.sony.eu/content/detail.aspx?ReleaseID=6931&NewsAreaId=2
Prices start at 1400$ for the small DEV-3 and 2000$ for the DEV-5 which has a GPS module.
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