This post is sponsored by SiOnyx, but all opinions are my own.
Filming is about to get a lot more interesting for us. Long gone are the days of the sun setting close to midnight as we spent the summer sailing the Arctic. Now, we find ourselves with just over 8 hours of daylight, and let’s be honest..our life, and our filming, can’t be put on hold until the season changes again.
So we are eager to announce that we have just added the SiOnyx Aurora Color Night Vision Camera to our camera collection. Listed as an IR Night Vision Camera, the Aurora works wonders in low light conditions thanks to a 1†sensor for low light sensitivity. When compared to our current action camera, images that would have been just blurry lights on a horizon are now full of detail and clarity. To give a little perspective, most low light surveillance cameras have a sensor half the size of the Aurora’s. This larger light sensor allows the camera to capture any light available and turn it into a readable and depending on the amount of light, a very distinct picture.
Which for us, also translates into the camera acting as a safety tool. Out on the water, we can use a faint bit of moonlight to clearly make out shore and other nearby ships. Our most recent passage had us coming into a fairly busy harbor in the middle of the night, where there could have been lots of confusion about trying to distinguish a ship’s navigational lights from the lights onshore. With one look into the SiOnyx Aurora Color Night Vision Camera, I was able to see that a set of lights in front of me that didn’t look ‘quite right’ with my naked eye, happened to be a large vessel passing between our boat and shore. This camera became even handier as we motored into our anchorage in the pitch black…using the capabilities of the Sionyx Aurora Color Night Vision Camera’s low light sensitivity to 1.) Make sure we were not dropping anchor too close to the shoreline, and 2.) We did not cross over any fishing buoys on our way in.
Features to note include:
A 3X zoom 16 mm glass lens
A focus ring to adjust from f/1.4-5.6
A selection of Day; Twilight; and Night recording
Option of recording in 8/15/24/30/60 fps
Time-Lapse Live Stream
IP67 Waterproof Rating
USB to micro USB charging cable
So for us, this camera is a win in so many ways. We can use it as a piece of filming equipment not only during daylight action and adventure times but when the sun goes down as well. (Plus, we were pleasantly surprised by the in-camera microphone). But the biggest reason we’re excited to have it is so our hearts are not always jumping into our throats as we make night passages. Offshore, sure, you probably won’t have anything to run into out there, but as we do more and more coastal hop the number of things for us to potentially collide with gets exponentially higher. The chance to clearly make those items out in the middle of the night? Well, it will have us resting much easier.
