Thermal Imaging Cameras and Night Vision Cameras from BBC The Dark documentary ???

A

atarijedi

Well-known member
Hello folks,

I was wondering if anyone here knew what thermal imaging cameras, and night vision cameras they used in the BBC documentary miniseries "The Dark: Natures Nighttime World".

The images are amazing, I recommend you see it if you haven't. Here is a clip from the show. You can watch the first 1:30min just to see what I am talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uskwRJf_W2A

I am thinking they used an ATOM 1024 (1024x768 uncooled LWIR) camera or a Jupiter MW (1280x1024 Cooled MWIR) based camera, for the thermal systems, since the images look HD and these seem to be the only 2 which can reach those levels of resolution, even though the ATOM is slightly lower than HD in width.

As for the night vision, I am thinking they are simply CMOS/CCD cameras with sensors that are extra sensitive (have low lux ratings around 0.001), but I am not sure.

I emailed one of the camera operators (Justine Evans, Jaguars), but haven't received a response yet.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!
 
iWiLL5 said:
View attachment 75812

In BBC Wild Arabia Episode 2: The Jewel of Arabia they used a Thermoteknix thermal camera. Probably a Thermoteknix MicroCAM 1024HD or a MIRICLE Thermal Imaging Camera with Canon EF mount.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I just recently learned about the MicroCAM 1024HD. I don't know if they used that camera or not, I don't believe they did though. That said, they are most likely using a camera system which uses the ATOM1024 Thermal Imaging module, and BBC probably rented the camera from the Ammonite company. Until I found the MicroCAM, I couldn't find anyone who used that module.

But still, that only covers the thermal portion. There is a lot of IR looking imagery in the documentary, they aren't using regular nightvision though, it is too high resolution. Maybe some special iCCD or sCMOS sensor.
 
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BBC-Wild-Arabia-5D.jpg

In the making of the same episode of Wild Arabia they also show how they captured the night scenes illuminated with infrared lights.
They used a Canon 5D (MK2/3?) - I assume with infrared conversion.
 
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