axis 2120 and night vision ?

[pauldb38 0]

Hi guys and girls this is my first post to the forum so please be gentle lol

 

Ok this is my problem i have just purchased a AXIS 2120 camera on the understanding it would work with my infared illuminator , no such look it works great for daytime but if i put the camera in a dark place at them moment testing it in my loft with a illuminator but in darkness it just a black screen even with the illuminator on. I know the illuminator is working cause once switched on you can see a red glow and if you point a camera to it the red glow turns white. The axis manual indicated it will work with a illuminator but doesnt say how you set this up or what you have to do to accept ir as a light source, can anyone help with this at all please ?

 

Kind regards

 

Paul.

[optikillusion 0]

Hi Paul,

 

From my limited experience it could be a couple things. And Im sure the more knowledgable people can chime in with more.

 

1. Your camera is not IR capable, the lense does not have a filter on it that can not filter IR. (cant find a manual online right now so I cant do any research)

 

2. Your IR illuminator does not work in the range that your camera can see. I belive the most common is 850nm light wavelength. Some do 940nm and you should not be able to see a red glow on those LEDs when powered on. Some cameras can not see the 940nm IR illuminators. Find out what your IR illuminator puts out.

 

From what I see online it looks like you can change the lens on the 2100 series. So even if the lense can not filter IR then you could change it out for one that does.

[pauldb38 0]

Hi Paul,

 

From my limited experience it could be a couple things. And Im sure the more knowledgable people can chime in with more.

 

1. Your camera is not IR capable, the lense does not have a filter on it that can not filter IR. (cant find a manual online right now so I cant do any research)

 

2. Your IR illuminator does not work in the range that your camera can see. I belive the most common is 850nm light wavelength. Some do 940nm and you should not be able to see a red glow on those LEDs when powered on. Some cameras can not see the 940nm IR illuminators. Find out what your IR illuminator puts out.

 

From what I see online it looks like you can change the lens on the 2100 series. So even if the lense can not filter IR then you could change it out for one that does.

 

According to the manual it does refer to using a infared illuminator for night vision with this camera , at the moment i have the camera in the loft with the illuminator facing in the same direction as the camera i wanted to test it all before putting it up as i'm not great at hights lol

[jhg 0]

I think most normal lenses should pass Near Infra Red NIR (both 850nM and 940nM) as well as visible light but bear in mind that the focussing will be different. If you look at good SLR lenses you will see a red focusing line for use with IR 'light'.

 

What this means is that if your cam's ccd (the retina) is allowed to be sensitive to both IR and visible light at the same time, you will get a double image when using during daylight (depending upon the amount of IR around) 940nM will be worse as it is further away from the visible spectrum.

 

This I think is the reason why there is an IR filter built-in to many lenses which you can often remove.

 

As an aside, Sony used to market camcorders with a switchable IR filter for night use.