Night vision equipment for mortals (1 Viewer)

[Mysticete]

Jon Hall review of a new thermal camera that seems to work about as well as much more expensive thermal scopes, but at only 400 bucks

Gear Review: Xinfrared T2 Pro Thermal Camera for smartphones – Mammal Watching

www.mammalwatching.com

 

[David_]

Maybe it’s just me, but a review of thermal camera on mammalwatching.com without any actual photos of mammals? The review says the camera was tested in the jungle and that you can easily take photos and videos. Why is the only photo of mammal (besides a human) a marketing image by the manufacturer?
Given the discount code and that he states that receives a bonus if anyone uses the discount code it seems more like marketing than a reliable review.

 

[opisska]

Well I really can't imagine Jon of all people distorting his review for some deal with the vendor ... I think it's more about that he used it for actual mammal search where you usually want to get white-light view as quickly as possible, in particular in forest, before the animal is lost.

Anyway, I am quite considering getting this - I have the Pulsar, but this thing can have several interesting use cases. If that happens, I will surely pick every tiny inadequacy of the thong apart in my review

 

[Farnboro John]

I did note that it runs your phone battery down quite quickly - in Sri Lanka we were using thermal scopes for up to five or six hours a night and it looks like this won't manage that. No doubt there are ways round it.

John

 

[jurek]

Lets wait for reports how it performs with distant animals and how long batteries last.

It would be great if there was a simple function: when detects a pixel warmer than, say, 30oC, sends vibration signal to the phone. I just realized that the night vision detects absolute temperature and later produces picture. This is often not good, because high contrast environment makes animals invisible - for example animals on warm rocks or arboreal mammals and owls on tree branches against the sky. If the absolute temperature was reported, it would pick the actual wildlife.

One could stop gawking at the screen all the time and simply sweep it over the habitat. Smaller risk of tripping over at night, easy to look behind you, easy to look up at treetops. One could sleep and leave the camera on - and get a warning when an animal appears. Hunters waiting for game would love it.

 

[stuarta21]

Looking to purchase my first Thermal Imager. I was planning to get the Pulsar Axion 2 xq35 but have seen the Hikmicro fq35 seems to have a higher spec for a relatively small increase in price, does anyone own or have experience of using the fq35? Use will primarily be finding birds at my local reserve such as Jack Snipe, Woodcock, Owls etc

 

[Steve Babbs]

I did note that it runs your phone battery down quite quickly - in Sri Lanka we were using thermal scopes for up to five or six hours a night and it looks like this won't manage that. No doubt there are ways round it.

John

Having a power pack attached to your phone should work okay. Although it may be a bit of a pain.

Edit: scrap that; I've now actually read the review and you plug the camera into the charging port.

 

[nmerc_photos]

thanks to everyone posting in this thread.. I have just recently come across thermal and it has caught my attention as being useful for owl photography

I was leaning towards the new Pulsar Telos LRF XP50, but have now been reading about the Hikmicro Falcon FQ50 pro. I just cannot seem to find a reliable seller here in the United States.

very cool pieces of technology all around

 

[Stonefaction]

thanks to everyone posting in this thread.. I have just recently come across thermal and it has caught my attention as being useful for owl photography

I was leaning towards the new Pulsar Telos LRF XP50, but have now been reading about the Hikmicro Falcon FQ50 pro. I just cannot seem to find a reliable seller here in the United States.

very cool pieces of technology all around

Looking up into trees for owls with a thermal imager is almost as 'hit and miss' as using your eyes. I have managed to see one or two - that I've heard first, but in general either the 'heat' of the sky or of the tree itself will make picking out a bird very difficult.

 

[Elkhornsun]

I have an active bat box and hopefully active barn owl nest box on my property. Inside the owl box I have a video camera with both daylight and night video capture. Outside of the nest box my options were limited.

I learned about and bought a Sony AX700 camcorder with IR Night Mode and it can shift the IR filters away from the sensor and allow the use of IR lights to illuminate an area. I bought the Sony HVL-LEIR1 battery powered light that can be switched between normal LED lighting and IR lighting. It runs for hours on two AA batteries (using rechargeable NiMh ones).

For the IR light source there are many options in terms of spread of the light and the intensity of the light and these are not going to be visible to animals, including bats and owls.

The AX700 camcorder can also be used to film subjects at 120fps and then replay them automatically at 24fps with no need to process the video - pretty slick.

​

 

[nmerc_photos]

Looking up into trees for owls with a thermal imager is almost as 'hit and miss' as using your eyes. I have managed to see one or two - that I've heard first, but in general either the 'heat' of the sky or of the tree itself will make picking out a bird very difficult.

In general, it would not be looking up in trees, they would be trees with other trees behind it. I have heard of many owl'ers being successful using this method especially for tree'd owls such as screech owls