Why Sony NightShot? DIY Night Vision Here

As suggestion ..... get an old b/w ccd security camera (not color cmos ones), for better results ..... they are more sensitive and defined, and cause almost all now are passing to "color megapixel day/night" models, the old b/w ccd ones had a dramatic price fall ..... also, usually some of them have much better lenses than a pinhole camera

Being ccd, they require more current, but the results are at least the double.

Also, half of them have the IR blocking filters directly glued on the ccd module (is a piece of "greenish" glass) that can be took away very easily, and lot of them, being planned for night survey, don't have any IR filter at all

And, if someone of you is lucky enough to know peoples that work in security system fields, maybe they have old units (used or obsolete) that you can get for few money ..... also in ebay sometimes these can be found (only check that they are complete with lenses and working)

b/w? cmos? -black and white I am assuming

btw, just how clear are they? LOL some of the older security cam's are basically 1 big pixel

I was leaning towards either a stand still cam or video cam because of the "zoom" in hopes that this device would also act somewhat as a scope

Well, indicatively, the "cmos microcamera" in that video is probably a 330 lines like this one or similars, with a very dark lens (3 lux min or worse) ..... a decent ccd camera is, usually, a 420 lines unit with 0.2 or 0,3 lux sensitivity and at least the double of the contrast than the equivalent cmos ones ..... this for microcams ..... also much more, if you find one of these big, old "boxes" style cams with "C" mount lenses threads .....

Personally, I think that IR LED bank that you were talking about earlier would be more than enough illumination. After all, you don't need to light up a football stadium.

I think that if you got as bright as you might be thinking it would be so much IR that you could feel it on your skin.. like a bright, invisible, ray of sun at night.

A little off topic, but Ive always been tempted to take a decent quality medium range security cam with IR LEDs and mount it in the front grill of my vehicle and then pipe the feed into my iPad mounted in the vehicle to make a sort of pseudo-FLIR. FLIR is installed on military vehicles of all sorts and most recently on high end luxury cars. Im not sure how it would look with headlights on but thats not the point.. this is for covert driving haha

Well... you could mount a visible light filter on the camera to filter out the light from the headlights. Around here people are always concerned with damaging people's eyes, and having a bright but invisible flood light mounted on the front of your car sounds like an excellent way to damage people's vision to me.

Perhaps I'm just being ridiculous.. worrying about other people's well-being and all..

I really have no intention of using it on the road or with head lights on, seems pointless to me. The only reason real FLIR is useful on road with headlights on luxury cars is because those systems actually detect the thermal IR radiation emitted from objects in their path and translate it to gray scale giving you the ability to see through fog, smoke, and see further then your headlights allow you to see. Whereas a security cam with IR LEDs illuminates the things in front of you like a flashlight and the camera is able to see in that spectrum. this set up would have the same limits of visual light to look through fog and such but it would allow me to drive with all visible lights turned off except the iPad.. and all of this off road of course. As for the "bright but invisible flood light mounted on the front of your car" I do not believe that a factory build night security cam would have enough IR radiation to damage peoples vision, seeing as how its a factory build security cam made to be used to watch humans..

Anyway, remember that you cannot have a "thermal" image with IR cameras, no matter what camera you use ..... IR cams works in 800/980 nm range (usually), and requires iluminators, where instead FLIR cams works in 8000/12000 nm range, and don't require illuminators .....

Thank you for reiterating exactly what I just explained more clearly in my post as a response

LOL ..... sorry, too much work and not enough caffeine, in these days

Is sony nightshot the same as night mode/low light mode on other camcorders? Would night mode/low light mode work the same way with an IR light as sony nightshot?

I realize this is a stale thread, BUT...

I did a net search and this convo popped up.

I heard that the old Sony HandyCams had an off-the-shelf night vision capability ("NightShot" feature) that allowed peeps to see quite well in the dark, even if the remainder of the camera was inoperative. I'm been scouring forums etc. looking and asking around for the best vintage model (and highest zoom?) so I can appropriate the night vision aspect for my "personal use."

Does anyone here know which off-the-shelf model(s) would best fit my purpose?