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I am looking to purchase a thermal or infrared camera for a secondary business that I am starting. Unfortunately all I can find on google are professional high cameras that are fire resistant (for fireman of course) and similary very "heavy duty" or "rugged". I simply want a standard "best buy" type camera that has the ability to do thermal imaging.

I of couse understand that I will need to pay more for this feature, but 3-7k is way out of my price range. Any camera experts able to point me into a sub $1000 bracket or am I just dreaming because they do not exist?

Thanks in advance.

I thought you just needed to put a filter on a standard digital camera.

You need to take a filter out of a standard digital camera.

EDIT: I bothered to get a link: http://www.wrotniak.net/photo/infrared/index.html , however it occurred to me that you might be trying to do something else.

Actually, found an article all about it here:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Take-Infrared-Pictures-With-Your-Digital-Camera/ (http://www.instructables.com/id/Take-Infrared-Pictures-With-Your-Digital-Camera/)

If you just want to take pictures with infrared light present in sunlight then the links above will help you. There's also a decent wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_photography) page. There are several digital cameras that are good for it, the Nikon D70S is one that I know about that works well without much modification.

If you want actual thermal imaging then that's a whole different kettle of sausages. The kind of infrared photography that most people do takes pics using light just outside the visible range. Thermal imaging uses much longer wavelengths of infrared light and is a much more specialised field. Because of this the cameras cost a fuckton more, mostly because the market for them is very small. As far as I know there are no, zero, nada, zilch ways to get round this. There just aren't any cheapo thermography-capable point'n'shoots available.

I have no helpfull input, but I want to know what that new business of yours actually is.  :why_so_serious:

I hope it does not involve repeated trips up and down escalators.

Wouldn't he be asking about retrofitting  shopping bags or luggage if that were the case?

Do you want one of these?

http://us.fluke.com/usen/products/CategoryTI/

My company sells them, I might be able to get you a deal.

This has been in my bookmarks forever, some day I might actually do it.
http://geektechnique.org/index.php?id=254

The Sony DSC-F707 type line (F717, H9, H50, R1) has a "Night Shot" mode. Apparently Sony nerfs it pretty bad but the DSC-F707 can have it's anti IR filter removed (Google tells me so) to let more IR light in. After that you can screw on a IR filter to the front. Both items were pretty cheap on eBay.

However, I tried my DSC-H9 in Night Shot mode against my monitors and they show up (unlike that mod Nerf linked).

YES! In fact that is the first one I found in my search. Any additional is much appreciated.

As for my usage in business, I am starting a home inspection business (big departure from banking I know) as a home based/side business. The new trend in the business is to offer thermal imaging to find otherwise unseen moisture that may have underlying damage. You can some examples of this technology is use at http://www.rpchi.com/thermal.html (http://www.rpchi.com/thermal.html) (just googled it this is not my site or anything, not even my state).

Where can I buy the goggles that give me predator vision?   :awesome_for_real:

Toy (but working):

http://www.amazon.com/EyeClops-Vision-Infrared-Stealth-Goggles/dp/B00153F5QA

Serious shit:

http://www.atncorp.com/

But if you actually want the stupid color mess shown in the movies, you'll have to strap a scientific IR imager to your head. It won't be easy on the eyes. Or your neck.

That's a good one.  We use it at work to determine resistor and capacitor heating.  Only goes up to 255°C though...