There seem to be two main reasons for shooting video in darkness: to record the activities of small nocturnal animals and to see how frightened your friends look after an evening of ‘Most Haunted'. Assuming you don't do either of these things professionally, Digital Blue's Night Spy camera is a fun way of capturing footage.

Shaped like a pistol-grip video camera, the Night Spy has a 1.3-megapixel sensor surrounded by ultra-violet LEDs for illumination. It takes video at standard 640 x 480, VGA resolution and what it sees is viewed on a 51mm (2-inch) LCD viewfinder, which shows the picture in green and black.

The camera is clever enough to switch back to normal light mode when there's sufficient light to trigger a detector at the front. The LCD then shows full colour and captures its video in full colour, too.

An array of six buttons below the viewfinder at the back enables simple video transport controls, file deletion and a two-LED, visible-light torch. The record button is a trigger at the front of the pistol grip. Four AA batteries slip into holders in the handle and there's a standard tripod mount set into its base.

The footage captured is of reasonable quality, given the resolution of the sensor, and the ultraviolet lighting level is surprisingly good: a range of 8-10m is no real problem. Basic nature photography is likely to be governed more by battery life than lens quality, though poltergeists might be more difficult to catch. The camera has its own microphone, so you get a soundtrack along with both full-light and night-light video.

Our main criticism is a slightly odd one. Assuming you're going to use the camera either for nocturnal nature filming or security, you'll want to use it as silently as possible. You don't want the subjects of your videos alerted to your presence by the camera itself.

Being memory-based, the Night Spy shoots entirely silently, which is a plus point, but when you turn it on, it goes "BoooooWaaaah", loudly enough to scare away anything smaller than Bill Oddie. There doesn't appear to be any way of switching off this sound effect, which isn't helpful.

Also on the downside are the lack of batteries. Not even straight alkalis are included, so you'll need to order a set with the camera. You should add in a 2GB SD card, too, as the 32MB internal memory is good for under two minutes of video. 2GB will give you about an hour and a quarter.

Verdict
Although it may appear a gimmicky toy, the Night Spy has serious applications and is capable of simple night vision tasks. Sensibly designed (apart from the start-up sound) and with easy-to-use controls, the only negatives are the high battery use and minimal on-board memory. These days, though, memory's cheap.

Company: Digital Blue

Website: http://Firebox.com

Contact: 0844 922 1010

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