ELI5: how do eyes see in darkness when camera lenses can't?

http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1y8t9j/eli5_how_can_i_see_so_clearly_at_night_while_my/

I believe it has to do with the fact that are pupils will get bigger to let in more light and that if there is enough light the brain will try to fill in the blanks that we aren't really seeing. I'm probably wrong but I think its something like that.

The sensors in consumer cameras aren't sensitive enough to pick up what little light there is when it's dark.

There are night vision camera's. Low light camera's that have much more sensitive sensors made specifically for use at night. These can see just fine when there's little light. The downside is, these camera's don't generally work in the daylight.

Many cameras can take great low-light images. The cameras commonly found in phones have fairly tough price, size, and useability requirements, so fringe photography such as very poor illumination is often not a priority and will often be lost in an effort to improve the quality of very bright conditions (e.g. beach photos) which are much more common.

Compare this to your eye which takes a long time (many minutes) to fully adjust from high-light to low-light mode and even then, low light signalling has very poor color representation and slow exposure speeds.