As someone fascinated by haunted forest photography, the blair witch project and night photography it was only a matter of time before I got into infrared photography. There is a couple ways to do this, either using infrared film in a film camera, or getting a digital camera modfied in order to allow it’s sensor to capture only infrared light. But instead of these I thought, what about those trail cameras used to keep track of animal movement in the woods? These usually take eerie night photos in infrared and can even film! And they are usually pretty cheap.
So I ordered one. But the thing with trailcams is that they are designed to be attached to trees and left there on their own taking photos when triggered by their sensors. I had to change a couple things about it and add some accessories in order to turn it into a usable camera:
- cut off the back of it so i can access the controls and screen
- mount it in a camera cage (this one is designed for phones)
- add an external battery plate (since the camera doesn’t have an internal battery)
- add a tripod plate to it for more static shots and video shooting
The camera operates on 12v which made it perfect to use sony NP-F batteries which I also use for my man camera and other camera gear I own. I’ve been using it for a little bit now and I’m pretty happy of how it works. I think if i end up shooting more video I might add a grip handle on the right side to have a more convenient place to hold it.
conveniently enough, even if it’s primarily designed to be trgffed by sensors, it can also be manually operated from the menu, with an option that shows the current image on the screen and one of the button used for shutter or for starting/stopping video recording. It also has it’s own built-in infrared light, which eliminates the need for additional lights when shooting (although it’s useful to have some form of visible spectrum light when shooting at night in order to see where we’re going).
You can see an example of some video I did with it on youtube: short trailcam video for voidxwitch
