JasonThick

Hi, I'm looking for recommendations for a camera that is good for close-range viewing in the dark. I'm working in a laboratory setting, monitoring a fixed point about 0.5-1.0 cm wide from about 30-40 cm away. I will be switching from total darkness to a dim lit (monitor lit) condition every 30 sec. So I guess I'm looking for a fixed camera with a good macro lens for night/IR viewing. thanks in advance

Thank you for all the input. Yea I didn't see any mention of the day/night feature on any of the spec sheets for the DV10x7B-SA2L. There is a comparison page on fujinon's website where you can pull up multiple lens and it lists their attributes. There it said 'yes' for day/night feature, but apparently this is a mistake. I gave Fujinon's tech support a call today to ask them about that feature, and they confirmed the lens was not IR corrected. While I was talking to the guy, I explained to him what I wanted to do, and at first he recommended a zoom lens, but he said that they can be very expensive. He did recommend another lens, the YV10x5HR4A-SA2L http://www.fujifilmusa.com/products/optical_devices/security/vari-focal/day-night-series/yv10x5hr4a-sa2l/ This is a 5-50mm lens, with Day/Night, automatic iris, rated for 1.3MP, minimum focus distance of 30cm, for a 1/3in sensor. One the paper it seems like the lens will work with the ACTi D21, which is a 1MP camera with 1/4in sensor. The camera also has a DC Iris port. The cheapest I could find the lens was for $67 new. It's a little more than I wanted to pay but doable. As I was reading through the specs for the ACTi D21, I realized the power is PoE, so now I need to find a four port switch with PoE.

I found this Fujinon 7-70mm lens on Ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Fujinon-1-2-7mm-70mm-Varifocal-Lens-F1-8-CS-DC-Iris-DV10x7B-SA2L-/281205675691?pt=BI_Security_Fire_Protection&hash=item41792a16ab I don't see any mention of IR correction, but it is listed for Day/Night use on Fujinon's website. Does that mean it is IR corrected? This lens does have an automatic iris. If I don't plug it in, can I control it manually?

Yea, descent might not be the ideal term, what I am looking for is the best that I can do for $25-50. I understand what you mean by going for quality. I'm buying this camera and lens for work though, and not with my personal money. I don't have that much flexibility with what my boss will allow me to spend. If I can't find something that will do the job, my boss isn't going to care. He's fine having me keep checking in on the mouse by standing over it. I suggested the camera, and he said it would be ok if I can do it for 'cheap'. I am buying the ACTi D21 locally, so I can return it if I need to. But I'm not going to find a lens locally that is in my target price range, so I'm a little more worried about that. I hadn't thought of checking ebay, I'll take some time to search through there. I do need 4 of what ever lens I get, making things a little harder. What does it mean for a lens to be MP? Does this just mean the build quality is better, so that it can support megapixel resolution? Also I prefer to use a manual lens that I can just focus once. I'm doing sensitive electrical recordings, and I'm already a little worried that the camera is going to generate electrical noise. I don't want to increase that chance by having a powered lens.

Thanks Myiicum but that lens looks like it's around $300. I understand that generally when I spend more money I get better results, but I'm on a budget. I'm trying figure out what is the best varivocal lens (in the 50mm area) that I can buy for $25-50.

Thanks for the recommendation on the lens. I am going to have to skimp a little a bit though, since I still have to budge out 4 IR light sources. Can you think of any descent 50mm CS lens that are more in the $25-50 range?

I'm not opposed to a box camera. I see ACTi has a box camera with similar specs to the D54 dome. D21F http://www.acti.com/product/detail/Box_Camera/D21F The D21F is listed for almost the exact same price. The only downside is that it doesn't include IR lights, so I'll have to buy a separate source. If I'm going with this style I have many options for lenses. Would a 50mm lens like this be ok: http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/724607837/F02211_CS_Mount_50mm_F1_6.html or should I go with something smaller or bigger? MaxIcon, thanks for the graph. Theoretically the mice shouldn't be able to detect the light emitted by the 850nm IR. But I don't even have to worry about it if I go with the box camera, since I can mount separate light source over their heads and out of their view.

I'm in France

I thought the shot look good except that the quarter didn't take up much of the field of view, but I thought the 25mm lens would help fix that. But then again I don't have much experience with this sort of thing, so maybe this is crap compared to what other cameras can produce. Can you recommend a good IP box camera that will work both in dark and low light settings, and that is in the 150-200 euro range? ps no I only plan on using the cameras for this one purpose, viewing the eyes of my anesthetized mice.

I'm not set on the ACTi cameras, the D55 and D54s are just the best I have seen in that price range. The IR lights seemed ok in the test shot that ACTi sent me. But if I need to I will buy a separate IR light. The space I'm illuminating is very small, about 60cm x 60cm x 100cm high. Here is the photo ACTi sent me of the D55 from 17in away from a quater It seems like if I could just zoom in further I'd be ok, that's why I'm thinking of getting the 25mm lens which should give me 7x magnification over the 3.6mm stock lens. I am under a relatively strict budget. I'd would be open to getting an analog or HD-SDI camera, but I don't think I'm going to be able to find something as cheap when you add up all the necessary hardware. Are you suggesting that I'm overpaying for the ACTi cameras, or are you saying that image quality that I will get from the ACTi cameras will be no good?

I'm looking to monitor my mice in realtime, recording isn't necessary. I think I'd be ok with an analog camera, but I would still have to buy a monitor or box to take in the analog signals, which I'm worried will cost a lot. I've found the ACTi D54 for 165 euros, and a m12 25mm IR corrected lens for 10euros. For four cameras that comes to about 700euros. I already have an LCD monitor, pc and router that I can use for this. Do you think I could get something comparable with an analog or HD-SDI camera, also taking into account that these may require additional hardware other than a PC and LCD monitor?

I don't doubt that a box type HD-SDI would give me better results, but I would have to buy a DVR capable of recording from 4 cameras. They seem sort of expensive. I'm still trying to keep costs as low as possible. I have to get approval for my purchases, and if the total price ends up being too much, my boss is going to nix the whole idea.

It's a 24in computer monitor with a white level luminescence of 80m/cd^2 (fairly dull for an LED monitor). The screen is showing white and black bars. But the procedure is to show the bars for 30sec and then total darkness for 30sec, repeatedly. I'd like to to be able to monitor the mouse's eyes during the 30sec of darkness as well. I think you are right, I have been given the impression that the human eye is able to detect higher wavelengths than the mouse eye. I believe mice have a detection threshold around 750nm. I'm assuming that 850nm is the peak wavelength of many of the IR LEDs, but I'm not sure what the high and low cut off wavelengths for these LEDs are. So the raytec 950 may have a peak wavelength of 950nm but also emits some like at lower wavelengths perceivable to the human eye. I'm not too worried about the IR source. If I need to I can mount a secondary IR source over the head of the mouse. This way it is out of the line of sight. I'm more worried about getting an image that is magnified enough. Tom, I don't know too much about HD-SDI. I was planning on getting 4 cameras (probably the D54 from ACTi) and a router, and then viewing the video on a LCD computer monitor. If I use HD-SDI do I need some sort of HD-SCI capable monitor?

Is the dome required, or just for protection? If it's only for protection, I can leave it off. I'm assuming if I get a 16+ lens it will probably be longer than the stock 3.6mm lens? When I asked the tech support guy at ACTi about replacing the lens, he said I could replace the board lens but that they did not sell any other lens for this model. So far the longest lens I have been able to find with IR correction is a 25mm lens (this one for m12) http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/904813915/25mm_1_2_Mega_Pixels_IR.html I'm still searching for a longer one if anyone knows of any. I think I will go with 4 of the D54's, I'm not sure that the D55 will benefit me any more with the extra 2MPs.

I was hoping to to be able to view in the dark as well as under low light (LCD monitor illumination). I am visually stimulating (displaying bars on the LCD monitor) my mice for 30secs, then 30secs darkness, and back and forth. Are these lens all a standard size? Could I potentially use one of the 50mm lens I see listed on aliexpress? http://www.aliexpress.com/item/F02211-CS-Mount-50mm-F1-6-Varifocal-Manual-Zoom-Focal-Ir-Iris-Aperture-Lens-For-CCTV/581546585.html ps do you guys think that the D55 and D54 from ACTi are the best camera for that price range? Are there any comparable cheaper cameras?

Sure Tom, I'm placing an anesthetized mouse 20 cm from a LCD monitor. Since the mouse is knockout out, I don't care about motion. I just want to be able to monitor the mouse's eyes while he is in front of the computer screen. The mouse's head is about 1.5 cm wide, and I figured I would place the camera above the monitor so that it was approximately 30 cm away. The eyes of the mice sometimes water or foam over when they don't blink, so I am trying to keep track of this. It's a slow process so frame rate isn't too important either. ACTi sent me a shot of a quater from 18in away using the D55. This image looked very good, but the quarter only took up maybe 1% of the entire screenshot. I'm guessing I would have to switch out the lens to get a closer shot? I don't need the quarter, or more specifically the mouse's head to take up 100% of the screen, but as much as possible while still keeping the price of things relatively cheap.

Yea I know what you mean by the IR lights being visible as a dull glow, but being much brighter in the IR range which is not visible to the naked eye. In this case I was thinking I might turn off or cover the camera LEDs and place a separate set of IR LEDs at a higher height. The dull glow is ok, but I want to keep it out of view of the test subjects. Since the camera is recording their face, the camera LEDs would be in their line of sight. I'm trying to keep costs down, because I'm going to need four of these. I hadn't thought about potentially using some low wavelength filtered film, that might might work well. Does disc material in a floppy disc do a good job? Better than exposed film? I called ACTi and they said they would take a photo with the D55 from 30cm away to give me an idea what the image quality would be like. At the minimum I'm happy with their tech support so far

Thanks for the feedback. I figured many of the ip cameras could record from this distance, but it's hard to find and sample shots from this distance. The other thing that I forgot to mention, is that I need the IR lights to be close to invisible. I have seen some camera with IR lights that are visible to the naked eye as a pink or violet color. Do you know if it is possible to see the IR LEDs with the ACTi D54 and D55 models? thanks again