How To Use An Infrared Illuminator For Night Time Video Recording
Many people think that night vision camcorder capability is only available to the military or through the purchase of very expensive and high tech equipment. Currently, however, things are rapidly changing and many cameras and camcorders have truly exceptional built in infrared capable vision and no light capabilities.
The current usual and lowest cost method of capturing video or images in the dark is by using infrared illuminators. One current example is the Sony Night Shot camcorder which pioneered this technique over ten years ago.
The recording surface used inside the video cameras is capable of capturing IR light. This allows the camcorder to record better quality video at times when there is no light. And on some models, an internal IR light source is built into the camera to give better results when recording when there is low or no visible light.
When shooting indoors where there is some visible light, these added IR light sources perform fairly well. People find, however, that the camcorders don’t do as well in very low light situations, such as shooting outdoors in the dark. There just is not enough of an IR source to light an outdoor scene using only the low powered built in unit. But, by adding an add on IR illuminator, excellent night time footage can be taken.
Add on illuminators range from factory made units available from your camcorder manufacturer to extremely powerful add-ons from OEM sources. The standard add on lights are fairly inexpensive, and more powerful battery powered add on units that allow adequate extra IR light up to 30 or 40 yards can be found for a few hundred dollars.
By making use of an added IR illuminator that is powerful enough, it’s possible to set up a useful night vision video camera without a huge cost outlay. The additional infrared illumination that you use is invisible to the naked eye, but you can use the LCD panel on your camcorder and view in the scene in what will look like near daylight conditions. The use of additional infrared illumination greatly reduces or eliminates the ‘graininess’ typically associated with low light photography.
Give this a go yourself in in the dark where only the camera can see. It will be surprising to find that the camcorder you use has more built in features than you thought.
