Today's digital SLR cameras offer the photographer full control of aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings enabling the capture of excellent usable images in low light that were not otherwise possible. However, in many situations such as photographing scenes at night with very little ambient light, or telephoto photography at night at a distance, even the best digital SLR cameras simply do not have sufficient sensitivity to capture adequate images. In these situations, night vision modules such as those described here are the ideal accessory. This article provides important guidelines for producing awesome night-time photos when using a night vision module-enabled digital SLR camera.

Because of the increased availability of high performance digital SLR cameras, capturing excellent photographs at night is now easier than ever. With full control of aperture and shutter speed settings as well as electronic gain (ISO), the photographer has the opportunity to capture images in low light that were not otherwise possible.

However, in many low-light and night-time situations, digital SLR cameras simply do not have sufficient sensitivity to capture adequate images. For one thing, with the ever-decreasing size of pixels, it’s remarkable that light sensitivity has not substantially worsened with each new generation of camera (since light sensitivity is directly proportional to detector pixel area). But, fortunately, there’s been a lot of camera development on noise reduction so sensitivity has kept pace if not improved slightly with the decreasing pixel area. Regardless of these changes, it remains that a sufficiently long exposure time cannot be used because either there is movement in the scene or the camera is moving (by being handheld or on a vehicle in motion) so long exposure times would result in blurring. For situations such as photographing scenes at night with very little ambient light, or telephoto photography at night at a distance, even the best digital SLR camera will be unable to produce adequate photographs without blur.

In these situations, a night vision module such as those described here are the ideal accessory (www.nightvisioncameras.com). Such a device fits between the SLR objective lens and the camera body and amplifies the light that is captured by the objective lens, projecting an amplified (but entirely green) image onto the digital camera’s image sensor. The result is up to 10 F-stops of improvement, a dramatic change enabling many applications that are otherwise impossible to photograph. The module transforms moonlit or starlit scenes into bright, high resolution images that are easily photographed. (See box below - How Night Vision Works)