Infra Red Night Image Quality and Illumination Range

Fig 1. 6210MC - Daylight reference image at ford

River Ford Site.
I chose this site to illustrate image contrast because of the temperature range it represents from very cold water (black) to the badger's body heat.

The tree to the right of the waterfall has retained a fair amount of heat whereas the rock face to the left is much cooler.

Figures 2 to 2b show the difference an equal change less (2a) and more (2b) in contrast makes. Less contrast equals more information within the limits of the technology.

Ltl Acorn 6210 MC and Bushnell 119467 - Review - Part 4

Back to Part 3 - First Impressions and Case design

Fig 20  Bushnell 119467 showing main PCB and the
back of the IR LED Array at top left

Infra Red LED Arrays and Power Consumption:


Following on from the last part of this review, I wanted to quickly compare how the two different approaches to achieving invisible or no glow IR LED's impacted on battery performance, and coincidentally find out how the cameras performed at low temperatures.


Test conditions and set up: 
Each camera powered by 4 New Energizer Industrial Alkaline cells each measuring 1.62 volts.
SanDisk SDHC 4GB memory cards.
Cameras set on time lapse to take

Wildlife reactions to trail cameras

Following on from the last post, I had the ProStalk set up over peanuts in the same area and as well as the squirrel, this was visited by badger and pine marten.

The video clip below shows a badger taking notice of the visible infra red when the camera switched on. Badgers and pine martens don't seem at all bothered by this and after their initial interest, will carry on as normal. Almost invariably, pine martens will come and give the camera a close up inspection and on a number of occasions where the camera has been set close to the ground, they have marked the camera by urinating over it. The first time this happened I thought the camera was a bit sticky when I went to check the card, and afterwards, as I looked at the video clips, I realised why.

This is not the case with other wildlife. Red Deer will always be nervous and shy away from the camera if they come close or it is directly in their path. Urbanised foxes, although nervous, do seem to tolerate the IR glow after a while, but out here where foxes are really wild, all you'll usually see is the light in their eyes as they keep to the edge of the illuminated area and skirt round and away.

Close by another camera caught these Red Deer hinds and I think a yearling calf, in the early morning light.