IP Camera recommendations?

[Bob Eager]

I thought of that, but it's a busy-ish road so it'd be on half the time.

[Bob Eager]

I had problems in daylight until I turned the 'brightness' down. At night, even with it turned all the way up, it's impossibly murky.

[Bob Eager]

As it happens, I'm looking at Zoneminder right now anyway...

[dennis]

If the IR image is good enough to trigger the alarm use the alarm out to switch the light on. Then at least the post trigger recording will be better.

[Bob Eager]

The image isn't good enough - I get very little recording at all.

Looks as if I need to investigate ways of getting the camera outside.

[Capitol]

Have you considered these:-

Really cheap!

[news]

Kills the battery on my old HTC, even with mains charger (HTC limits it to 0.4A) it packs up after a few hours from full charge.

AJH

[alan]

The standard way of converting a off-the-shelf digital camera for near IR only photography is to remove the IR (blocking) filter in front of the detector element and replace it with two layers of "black" processed colour film negative. In the days when we used 35mm colour film there was always a bit of the negative returned after processing that was fully black.

The new black negative filter blocks visible light but let through the near IR. This works with cameras with plastic and multi-element glass lenses.

[fred]

That's interesting, thanks, I may have some negs lying around in the photo archives with some black lead in ends still present.

For a faff free buy however, this sort of thing might be easier:

(IR filter sheet)

Amazingly difficult to search for though, plenty of false hits.

[Nick Odell]

I read somewhere that because the focal point of IR differs from that of visible light, one needs to move the detector to compensate for the auto-focus. Any tips on how far to move it and in which direction - or is it all down to trial and error?

Thanks,

Nick

[Tim Watts]

On Saturday 18 January 2014 11:49 Nick Odell wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Yes - the focal point of a lens is totally dependent on the wavelength. That's why your optician does the red circle/green circle test. Spectacles have to compromise so he's trying to balance the focus of red and green so one is not outstandingly blurry.

[Richard]

Are you wanting to take IR shots with a point and shoot digital camera or are you still on the IP camera topic?

[The Natural Philosopher]

which is why camera lenses - or one reason why camera lenses - are more than one 'lens'. To correct chromatic aberration.

However they do not USUALLY correct for infra red...

[alan]

It will depend on how the focus is being implemented. If it is using the image falling on the detector element itself then blocking the visible image with a filter that only allows IR the autofocus should still work.

On single lens reflex film cameras (and probably the new generation of top-end digital cameras) there is an extra red mark on most lenses. You focus using the visible band and then moved the focus point to the second reference mark on the lens.

[Nick Odell]

Sorry: I jumped into the thread at this point and didn't notice the subject line.

I've got a 'spare' bridge camera and some idle thoughts about converting it to IR. It's spare because so much has broken that it just isn't worth taking out and about any more: I have another bridge camera in full working order anyway. I just thought that I might take it apart to try and fix the problems - which are all electrical contact things anyway - and at the same time it might be worth turning it into something different.

Nick

[Nick Odell]

See my reply to Richard, above. It's a Fujifilm S1500 bridge camera which has a 10Mp sensor and fair-to-middling quality lens but has no manual focus option. The battery compartment lid is held on with string, the rotary selector has intermittent contacts and the on-off switch doesn't work (I switch it on by pressing the picture-viewing button followed by the "resume taking pictures" routine and have set the auto-shut-down to the minimum time). You can see why I use my other camera, can't you? I either have to chuck it in the bin or open it up and see if I can fix it - in which case a mod to IR seems an interesting way to go.

Nick

[Richard]

A while back, I used an Olympus point and shoot for IR. It worked fairly well. That camera didn't need any internal alterations and simply used a filter in front of the lens. The autofocus worked for IR shots. See here for a filter and some info:

[Huge]

WTF is a "bridge" camera?

[Nick Odell]

Thanks, Richard. I'll follow that up.

Nick

[Nick Odell]

Nick