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Does anyone have experience with using an I/R spotlight to extend the range of video camera nightshot capability and does it give off visible light? What set ups work best?

I worked with a company trying to develope just that. (the goal was to use it for filming BASE jumps)
we first tried useing filters over existing visible light spotlights, it not only melted the gel it didn't really work that well. I was not involved past that.

This is the one we're looking at getting.

http://cgi.ebay.com/...QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Ive always wondered if that would work or not. Seems like it would be an awesome idea to use night vision mode and then a 1,000,000 candle power light

I just read that ebay add, doubling the night shot mode distance wouldnt do much, as night shot will get you about 10 feet under pitch black circumstances. If you get it, post a report.

I have no idea about those, we were going to use actual spotlights, as in more than 50-100 million candlepower. possibly more I think. something that would be used in hollywood productions kind of spotlight.

$85 is not that much, look around for it cheaper. but it *looks like it might work.

we were wanting to use it for tele-cinematography, of something up to 3000' away. with a 34mm equivalent 500mm lens.

Doesn't it kind of defeat the object... jumping at night with a mega big spotlight... Want a good spotlight, you might as well dayblaze.

As far as I know the thing about I/R that it is not visual to the human eye but can be used to pick up images with a I/R camera even in complete darkness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_vision
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared

ooookaaaaay it's I/R

crawls into a dark spot to hide

Yes. Have one and have jumped with it quite a few times. I mounted it onto the side of my helmet and powered it independently with one of the camera batteries (M series info lithiums that you use for the pc105's)

It definitely increases the distance you can see into the night but sadly it doesn't broaden the beam, so you still end up with a hot spot in the centre of the screen fading out to black quickly. To counter this, i taped some opaque gels onto the front of the lamp to try to diffuse the beam. This works a bit but still, it doesn't give the desired result.

Consequently I don't jump the lamp now. Jumping in the pitch black (ie. rural antennas) just isn't worth filming in my view cos there isn't enough ambient light so i don't wear a cam helmet for those jumps anymore.

For the best results on jumps where there is some ambient light (urban jumps) I just jump nightshot with the backlight function turned on. This opens the iris and let's just a bit more light in which helps.
Once i get the footage in to my computer I just increase the gain and the gamma. It's amazing how much more information you can eke out of the picture doing this.

Super nightshot is a gimmick and isn't worth shit.

ian

Thanks for the trick, I will give this a try!

What I am thinking of doing is mounting spotlight and video cam on platform used by ground crew. If it works in the field like is does in my head the ground crewperson should be able to use the lcd screen to center subject. Any thoughts?

Dude, you can't hide in a dark spot. We've got IR

oh ye?

ok, thats cool.

When I was a civilian contractor pilot loaned out to the 10th SF at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs a few years ago, I never knew what to expect when assigned a 'mission'.
It may have been as simple as dropping 200-400 troops from 1500-2000 feet over a remote DZ on the military range, or a civilian airport, before getting winded out for the day.

Occasionally a group of combat equipped HALO guys would show up when I was flying static liners, and ask for a ride or two to the top to re qualify their HALO FF status. (more money)
Of course I was always happy to accommodate them, and would always find a way to slip them into the many low loads I flew that day.

One day the boss called me with a mission for The 10th. I was to land a Caravan at Fort Carson's Butt's Army Airfield shortly after dark, fly two loads of SL jumpers and their jumpmasters to LAT 000.00.00.00 X LONG 000.00.00.00, at XXXXXmsl, drop them there within a 20 second window, then return later with two loads of supplies.

I flew the two jump missions as described, then returned to Butts again for two loads of cargo to be dropped in the same general vicinity. The only difference this time I learned, was I supposed to reference off of IR strobe beacons on the ground, instead of the GPS coordinates.
Although I didn't have any experience with this particular type of visual reference for night drops, I work pretty well under pressure, and figured I'd work it out on the fly.

30 minutes before our scheduled takeoff time, the Army loadmaster had his two kickers tape slick, heavy cardboard type material to the aircraft floor before loading the two 1000 lb supply loads we would be dropping to the troops below, with a small forklift.

We were all climbing in as I was giving the briefing on the slide up Lexan door, my hand signals, and how I wanted the load to leave the aircraft, when the loadmaster handed me two pair of NVG's.
I asked him "What are these for?"
He told me "In case one craps out"
"Well", I said, "What is the first one for?"
He said "So you can see the IR reference beacons. These next two supply flights are going to be totally blacked out...no nav lights, no landing lights, and minimum cockpit lights as well."
Hmmmm...oops, I had forgot about the IR beacon part of the mission. OK, I guess that won't be a problem...LOL
I had experienced plenty of lighting and electrical failures while flying, and don't really have a problem flying a blacked out aircraft in mountainous terrain...at night.

When we arrived in the drop area a few minutes early, I made a few wide orbits to establish my timing before the actual drop. En route I had already figured how to wear the NVG's and my headset at the same time, but was tripping on the visual effect the NVG's had on the aircraft's lowly lit instrument panel.

When the troops below saw we were in the area and established radio contact with us, they turned on the IR strobe, which was an incredible marker for me to line up on in the darkness. Once I had the drop line worked out, I started to look out in the surrounding area and noticed lots of smaller IR lights on individual weapons, and some soldiers using IR spotlights.

I couldn't give you an exact range, but based on what I saw the military using that night figure you should be able to get a minimum of 300-400 meters useful light from a civilian version of the same type gear the Army was using.
Then you'll still need some very good camera gear.

However, I still feel the end result may not be the quality you would like to achieve.

BASE359

Great story JSbird

ye, very cool

I've tried the spot light, not impressed. Tried building a 30 bulb IR camera ring (which screwed onto my camera) once again not impressed. Until a friend of mine showed me a military night scope Generation 2 it was striped down so it was only the IR 2nd generation intensifier tube and powerful infrared illuminator. It was 3" long and he was able to video jumps in pitch black from the ground just by holding this to the end of the video camera. You could easily video jumpers exiting from 1000ft. The picture was green but looked like it was daylight.

Some video cameras will purposefully try to filter out IR light. CMOS sensors (or was it CCDs?) are actually more sensitive to IR light than to visible light, so they try to include an IR blocking filter into the optics. On some cameras (like the crummy CVS disposable M100) it is possible to fairly easily remove this filter with a screwdriver and a bit of xacto work. The camera becomes fairly useless for any other use besides IR (as IR shows up blue-ish) but it picks up infrared a lot better than it did before. For further fun, you can put a piece of exposed color film on the front so that it ONLY picks up infrared light. This makes for a cool effect in daylight (sky becomes pitch black, trees glow bright-blue) but at night it can work for identifying IR sources.

Imagine being able to wave around a modded CVS crap-o-cam near an object and seeing all the IR-equipped surveillance gear...

(Not that you should do this, of course, but it might work... )