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Posted: 1/20/2014 8:42:21 PM EDT
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I just received a new FLIR LS64 unit. This is my first thermal purchase. I took it out yesterday to some land I own where I knew I could find some creatures of some sort, horses, cows, dogs, coyotes possibly. As with a lot of technology I am sure there is a learning curve. For those of you that have this or a similar unit, what advise can you give about environmental conditions that help or hinder performance? Brightness settings that work best or is it simply preference? The conditions yesterday were calm sunny and @65 degrees. The land was a 80 acre costal field with several narrow tree lines crossing. I could see out to @800 yards. Here is what I found. Looking at horses and cows from 200 yards and further, the WH was very white really washing out the animals against the trees and round bales of hay and even the ground in the pasture. It was very difficult to differentiate the animals from the background until they moved. In videos and pictures I have seen there is a definite contrast between living things and inanimate objects. I found the BH to be better against the ground but not so much against the tree line or hay bales, everything was really black. The instalert on setting 1 was not useable until the sun set, everything was red except the sky no matter how I held the unit. I found that after the sun went down I could use the instalert and avoid some of the red bloom by putting the area I was viewing in the top 1/3 of the FOV. If I raised the unit and got trees in the FOV everything goes red. Setting 2-4 were unusable regardless of how I held it. My initial thoughts are that the WH is too white, the BH too black and IA too red. Like I said I am sure it takes use to learn the units capabilities but is was almost a disappointment how effective it was at discerning living creatures from surroundings. A horse at 200 yards well after dark in @50 degree temps was hard to make out from the background unless it was moving. A horse beyond 500 yards was not detected whatsoever, or at least transmitted with any contrast detectable by my eyes, using WH or BH. Did the conditions have a hand in my results possibly, along with my first time inexperience? What I saw was really nothing like the contrast shown in threads here or pictures and vids on the FLIR site. Could this unit have a calibration issue? When I recieved the new unit it had been opened, (the clear circle tape over lid was cut) there was a fingerprint on the objective lens and the unit had obviously be handled by the dealer or possibly it was a return. I didn't think much about it at the time but I am curious now. I appreciate any advice. |
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You are going to have to learn how to utilize the instrument and that is not completed the first time you turn it on and look through it.
Normally, I have brightness setting one or two down from high. Normally, I use InstaAlert #1 for most instances, increasing to #2, #3, or #4 if it is humid, raining, or super high humidity. It often will be too much during the day, so may not be able to utilize Instalert until after sundown and later on into the night as things cool off. Look for horizontal objects and movement, black hot and white hot each have their separate uses. Practice with it day and night, hot and cold, rain and fog or clear, high and low humidity, after a month or two you will learn how to use it properly. Sounds like it is working just fine based on your description. |
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I just got a PS32 and have learned there is definitely a learning curve.
I've noticed that if I'm looking uphill at something and the sky is in the image, it will blow out the averages and it will no longer get the temp range that animals are in and will lump them in with trees, but if I put a finger over part of the lense it will average out correctly. It seems like apart from what Skypup pointed out, being able to crop out objects you dont want messing up the image average like a creek or roadbed is also important. That makes me wonder if the higher power lenses are a little more effective because you get a narrow focus and can crop what you dont want messing with it. Any tips for dealing with cold skyline. would be helpful. I'm definitely still figureing mine out. I have used in the past some much higher end weaponmounted thermals and I didn't remember having so much trouble with it, but we were also in much more "boring" terrain. |
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I believe that the center pixels are the heat reference point, it certainly is not the entire screen, try to point down lower than what you are targeting and that often helps you to see better in the upper 50% of the lens.
Pointing it towards the sky and having part of the upper atmosphere in your lens is not going to do you any good as you are looking at cold air, keep it in parallel with the ground you are standing on. The most difficult is right after sundown when rocks, tress, etc contain the most heat, these all mute out by around 9-10PM as they lose their heat once the sun goes down. Humid rainy foggy calls for more higher use of InstaAlert numbers to see anything, but mammals stand out even better against a monothermal background when everything is the same temperature. Of course, the most strong times are cold clear high pressure to see distinct high resolution for longer distances. No matter what the story or weather is like, you still are 10X better off with detection using thermal than when you use NV... |
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The above is what I have experienced as well.
With the ls64 point slightly above or below the object of interest it will affect the auto gain pre programmed into the unit and make things darker or brighter. This will help make the object of interest stand out a little more. The ps24/32 will greatly be effected by pointing up or down, I like the way the ps24 works much much better as far as the auto gain settings. The ls64 will not work very well with the finger trick, you can try it by placing your finger at the bottom of the lens and barely raising it you can trick the flir into shifting the gain to give a better contrast. Try the e zoom by holding down the zoom button until the e appears then you can zoom in and out. Sometime the amount of zoom will help give a better contrast, the screen brightness effects the contrast as well. I usually run full brightness or one bar down from full. At longer ranges you may only see a very few pixels lit up by a critter,so slowly move the flir side to side very little and see if the hot spot shifts side to side as well with the screen like a dust spot. What you want to see is if different pixels are detecting the hot spot, if it moves like a dust spot on the screen its a difference on the detector not a critter or hotspot. If after the NUC ( the small square that appears and disappears upper left) the detector should re calibrate, and any differences should disappear. When you move the flir side to side slowly the spot should move from pixel to pixel which means something is emitting a thermal emissions a critter or hot spot is detected. If some of this does not make sense don't worry after using it for awhile you may get what I am trying to describe. The ps 24 is much much more consistent for me hot/cold fog (very stable), just not as much detail. Only one pixel may only light up for a hog 600yds away but that one pixel is all I need to investigate. So if you don't like the ls64 try the ps32 or the ps24, great at detecting critters just not as much detail. |
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finger trick illustrated and some other information http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_6_18/386255_PS32___Am_I_doing_something_wrong_.html I had posted some information before, here it is again
here is an example - excuse the crudy images, shot holding a camera up to the viewer initial image - lots of cool street, hot trees and buildings washed out white  by bringing my finger, held paralel to the ground, horizontally, along the bottom edge of the lens, and rolling it upwards toward the center of the lens (it started on the black ring of that the lens cap goes on) you can introduce heat into the sensor, causing the range of temps it has to display to change, getting this  image is much better thru the view finder than above, and the finger never actually entered the displayed fov, but enough heat was present that the sensor used it to change how it segmented the range of temps to display edit - you can see the effects of the heat from the finger moving into the fov - notice that the dark paved area now shows some white in the bottom image EDIT - Just to note. You don't have to add the heat from the bottom of the fov - it was just because of the way i was trying to take the photo's, that it was more convenient to do so. Normally, holding the scope, you should be able to use your little finger on the hand holding the scope, and approach the fov from the top, the top side, or the bottom, what ever is more convenient to do so. |
initial image - lots of cool street, hot trees and buildings washed out white http://i50.tinypic.com/6xqgxv.jpg by bringing my finger, held paralel to the ground, horizontally, along the bottom edge of the lens, and rolling it upwards toward the center of the lens (it started on the black ring of that the lens cap goes on) you can introduce heat into the sensor, causing the range of temps it has to display to change, getting this http://i46.tinypic.com/ic8jo0.jpg image is much better thru the view finder than above, and the finger never actually entered the displayed fov, but enough heat was present that the sensor used it to change how it segmented the range of temps to display edit - you can see the effects of the heat from the finger moving into the fov - notice that the dark paved area now shows some white in the bottom image EDIT - Just to note. You don't have to add the heat from the bottom of the fov - it was just because of the way i was trying to take the photo's, that it was more convenient to do so. Normally, holding the scope, you should be able to use your little finger on the hand holding the scope, and approach the fov from the top, the top side, or the bottom, what ever is more convenient to do so. Quoted:
finger trick illustrated and some other information http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_6_18/386255_PS32___Am_I_doing_something_wrong_.html I had posted some information before, here it is again
initial image - lots of cool street, hot trees and buildings washed out white http://i50.tinypic.com/6xqgxv.jpg by bringing my finger, held paralel to the ground, horizontally, along the bottom edge of the lens, and rolling it upwards toward the center of the lens (it started on the black ring of that the lens cap goes on) you can introduce heat into the sensor, causing the range of temps it has to display to change, getting this http://i46.tinypic.com/ic8jo0.jpg image is much better thru the view finder than above, and the finger never actually entered the displayed fov, but enough heat was present that the sensor used it to change how it segmented the range of temps to display edit - you can see the effects of the heat from the finger moving into the fov - notice that the dark paved area now shows some white in the bottom image EDIT - Just to note. You don't have to add the heat from the bottom of the fov - it was just because of the way i was trying to take the photo's, that it was more convenient to do so. Normally, holding the scope, you should be able to use your little finger on the hand holding the scope, and approach the fov from the top, the top side, or the bottom, what ever is more convenient to do so. +1 this works. simple explanation: put your finger at the very edge of the view and you will get better contrast. |
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