Filming Wildlife at Night

As I have posted about some rather serious issues in the past few days I thought I would let you know some good news. As I mentioned previously, a couple of weeks ago I ordered and paid for an Infra Red lighting system, well it arrived today. I had been having kittens (worrying about it) as I had received a letter from the Royal Mail informing me that a parcel that either I was sending or receiving was damaged in some way. Thus I needed to identify what could have been in the parcel. As there was only one thing that I had sent, I told them what that item was, and they agreed that an item similar was among the items they were trying to repatriate to the owners. But as I also have a couple of books due, I will soon have more books than the local library, I was worried about what had been damaged. Anyway, within minutes of the IR lighting arriving I get a call from the person dealing with the damaged parcel and it turns out that the item is in fact fine.

What had happened was that something, probably a printer cartridge had broken or leaked. This had meant that to save the content of a number of packages they had been opened. However, that had lead to the content becoming miss matched to the labels. It turns out it was the item I was posting out. There will be someone thinking that I have not sent it. Well as soon as I get it back I will resend it.

So it looks as though I need not have worried, oh the fun of relying on others. It is good to get the IR lights and I hope that I will soon be putting them to good use. I can not do so yet as the camera has yet to arrive.

While there are many video cameras that can film in infra red, the real difficulty is the light, or lack of it. Most are not suitable for filming wildlife, as the range of the light is far to shallow. Thus, by following the good advice I was given, I searched for the lights first, they are pre owned, then sought a camera that can operate with the lights. Again by going for something pre cared for, I get greater optical quality than I would be able to afford by buying new.

It will be interesting to use this equipment as I wonder what I have been missing that has passed close to me that I have not been aware of and if my attempts to identify wildlife by sound and dark shape has been accurate. For all I know it could be that some of what I have been seeing are the fairies wandering around with cardboard cut outs of animals.

However the real test will now be if I can actually film any of the wildlife. Knowing my luck they will all go on strike and demand union rates. At least I think the badgers will work for Peanuts.