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modifying digital camera

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ahuebel

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Hopefully someone reading this can give me an opinion. I have an outdoor digital camera (a bushnell Trail Sentry) that I use to picture deer. It has been my experience that some deer are "spooked" by traditional flash bulbs and I want to change to IR lights. I bought an IR illuminator kit **broken link removed** and I was hoping to replace the flash bulb with this (and put an IR filter on the lens as required). Anyway, the flash bulb uses a 220uF capacitor and I am pretty certain that kind of voltage would blow the LEDs. Could anyone tell me whether a capacitor would discharge too quickly for the LEDs to light up? If not, I could replace this one with a smaller.
 
I figured as much. I think the easiest option may be removing the capacitor and flash from the circuit and having a separate system with IR illuminator and motion sensor to trigger the circuit. Thanks for the reply.
 
One BIG disadvantage will be the exposure time, the high power flash 'freezes' moving action, LED's can't produce anywhere near that amount of power so you will probably require longer exposure times, with movement causing blurring.


Still, it's something interesting to play with!.
 
Well these kinds of cameras are moving towards IR LEDs so I know it works, I was just hoping to be able to do it myself without shelling out 300 bucks for a new camera. In fact, I just bought a StealthCam camera and about two months after I bought that one, they LED version was at the same store. They use much fewer LEDs which produced hotspots in the pictures so I figured more LEDs would fix that problem.
 
the newer model has an IR flash option, I assume you are trying to avoid the upgrade cost? You might find that selling your current one on ebay and buying the new one an easier approach.

Hmmm, it's possible but you'd need to determine some things. Does the IR illuminator output enough IR to take a picture? Does your camera have an IR filter integral to the lens (many do)? You should test that - take a picture in the dark with illuminator on. its should be obvious.

I don't know how the illuminator ramp up time compares to the focus time of the camera. It may be a wash but even so, I'd not go for the flash output as it seems difficult to harness the voltage to the xenon strobe. At the very least, I'd find the trigger to the strobe and use that. but...

The camera has LEDs to indicate motion activity. Do these typically come on before the picture is taken? If so, instead of hooking into the flash system, I'd hook into the LED circuit. Use this to turn on the power to the IR illuminator. You should definitely power the illuminator seperately from the camera. I'd use a logic level N-MOSFET to control power to illuminator though you may need to use a transistor to supply a higher voltage to trigger the MOSFET. You might also want put a variable delay into the circuit if the LEDs come on a lot with out the camera taking a picture.

edit: wow, in the 15 minutes it took to compose this you guys had quite a chat... also, I thought about the seperate motion sensor but that may be tricky to set up so both it and the camera sense the same location/activity.
 
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Ahubel, Youre looking at it backwords! You need to remove the "IR" filter from the lens in your camera, and block the flash in the cam with filter material.
 
ahuebel said:
Hopefully someone reading this can give me an opinion. I have an outdoor digital camera (a bushnell Trail Sentry) that I use to picture deer. It has been my experience that some deer are "spooked" by traditional flash bulbs and I want to change to IR lights. I bought an IR illuminator kit **broken link removed** and I was hoping to replace the flash bulb with this (and put an IR filter on the lens as required). Anyway, the flash bulb uses a 220uF capacitor and I am pretty certain that kind of voltage would blow the LEDs. Could anyone tell me whether a capacitor would discharge too quickly for the LEDs to light up? If not, I could replace this one with a smaller.
I would think the picture would be taken before the animal was spooked. That is one of the nice things about electronic flashes. My indoor wild animals (two cats) never react in any way to my camera flash. I think you should do some testing before attempting to change things.
 
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