Hello,
I want to show nightlife (mammals) to my guests (I run a wildlife centre). I want to go on the budged. So what I have is a feeding place where I attract stone marter, dormouse and other mice species, fox and hopefully badger. Near that place (a few meters) I built a hide (a small cabin).From the cabin my guests should be able to see the animals. I have been thinking about those futuristic army helmets or binoculars with IR vision, but these ar every expensive. I have a Trophy Cam from Bushnell wit very acceptable image quality. That I could use and connect to a monitor, but then I cannot zoom, pan or tilt. So for now, I search alternatives. I imagine that I will bring a labtop to the cabin and connect a camcorder to it, so that we have live vision on the monitor. Now there are some possibilities.

1 I could buy a IR camcorder, such as: Amazon.com: Bell and Howell DNV900HD 1080P Infrared Night Vision Camcorder With Accessory Kit: Electronics

2 I could use one of the camcorders I have, such as my canon hv20 or sony hdr-hc9 and buy an IR lamp, such as: Amazon.com: Sima SL-20IR Night vision Video Light (Black): Camera & Photo

In both cases I will have problems getting the image LIVE on the monitor of my labtop, because it doesn't have HDMI. So I gues what I will have to buy is a monitor that accepts live feed from HDMI.

I have 4 questions:

1 Can anybody think of an alternative to show my guests the wildlife?

2 I was reading about camcorder not being compatible with IR lamps becaues a filter blocks it out. This discussion points this out: IR Illuminator (Infrared Illuminator) for Panasonic Camcorder? - Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091214160235AAvvM3i)
Anybody any experience with this with the mentioned camera's or in general?

3 How would the quality of the image of a normal camcorder in combination with a lamp be compared to a true (but budget) IR camcorder?

4 Has anybody ever looked through binoculars with Night vision? How is that?

Many thanks,
Rob

Sony has IR (nightshot), and IIRC Canon and Pany added this to some of the latest cams - your HC9 has it, connect via firewire and you could send to a bigger monitor, maybe? Most later Sony cams have HDMI out and I presume you could just simply monitor directly that way.

You've already found the Sima lights (effective for short distances), and a quick search on eBay would probably turn up all shapes and sizes of IR lights. Search DVi for "IR" and you'll find old posts from people who shoot "nightlife" (bats being one subject i recall!), as well as details on how the technology works in the cameras.