Filming wildlife at night

[louie_the_fly]

My wife is looking into what's required to start up a hands on environmental education centre for pre-school to ~year 10 at our property in the eastern mount Lofty Ranges. She's been in pre-school education for years. This is all based on her recently attending a work seminar about this sort of stuff and how it's used in Europe. Apparently it's really taking off. Kind of the next progression in eco-tourism. Eco-education.

So here's the thing. On our property we have a few colonies of Echidna, among many other native animals & bird life, plus we also have a stretch of river running through that's home to some native fish & crustaecea species. I'm thinking of doing some night filming of the Echidnas, and maybe kangaroos, but I've never done anything like that before. Any suggestions on how to go about it? I have a pretty decent video camera with a night vision setting. Would that be suitable? Should I set up subtle lighting for filming? We're not trying to emulate the work done by Sir Richard Attenborough or Jaques Cousteau at this stage. She just want to get some preliminary background info together.

She also reckons she could incorporate Astronomy into it for the older age groups. Just got to build my observatory.

Any tips would be most helpful.

Stew (& Deb)

[OzEclipse]

Most night photography of wildlife is done with infrared illuminators and cameras.This is invisible to the animals and hence doesn't disturb their feeding or other behaviour. Some security cameras come with integral IR lighting. Then you need some sort of frame grabbing software to record it.

Also look up trail cameras, placed unattended by hunters to survey wildlife.

You could try the subtle lighting. The night setting on some videocams results in a very slow long exposure and hence blurred vision of objects in rapid motion. Most handycams go noisy in low light due to their small ccd's.

Sounds like a nice lifestyle!

Joe

[hotspur]

Try this remote activated camera.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/2013-New-BLACK-FLASH-ScoutGuard-SG560K-8M-8MP-Long-Range-Scout-Hunting-Trail-Cam-/251213000653?pt=AU_Video_Cameras&hash=item3a7d762fcd&_uhb=1

here is a night wildlife footage result I obtained with above camera

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcE_UVB-6PQ

daytime footage is ordinary,the night footage from this cam is fairly good,its only 640 by 480,no audio.Bushnell make models with audio and 1080 wide screen size.But the cams are more difficult to get along with,and build quality has 'room for improvement',the above cam in link will allow you to review footage on its screen in the field,always buy a cam with 'blackflash'.

[louie_the_fly]

Thanks for the replies. I'll have to do some more invesrigating. that camera in the ebay link looks like the sort of thing we need. yes Joe, it is a nice lifestyle. if only i didn't have to work 5 days a week. It does take a bit of getting used to. moved from a town 1/2 hour from adelaide to 10 minutes further east. no neighbours, cars, barking muts, just nature.

Stew