I promised myself not to buy more thermal cameras unless something very special came along. So far so good, no new cameras in the collection
I have, however, purchased another auxilliary lens for use with my cameras.
As readers of my posts will know, I previously purchased a very nice brand new Fluke Tele2 X2 telephoto auxilliary lens that improves distance viewing on a thermal camera fitted with an approx 24 Degree FOV objective. With the Tele2 fitted you get 12 Degrees FOV. Very useful. The lens elements are 'proper' high quality Germanium units so image quality is excellent. No cheap molded Chalcogenide IR glass here
The lens exit diameter perfectly matches into my FLIR Exx series camera and only a mounting adapter is needed to join the two together.
I have been watching a brand new Fluke Wide2 lens for some time. It provides x0.5 magnification on a camera fitted with an approx 24 Degree FOV lens. The result is a 48 Degree FOV
Good for building observation and work in tight spaces. The seller originally asked around £500 for the lens but it did not sell. It is equipped with Germanium lens elements, just like its stable mate, the Tele2. I was interested, but not at £500! The lens has failed to sell for many weeks. Likely because Fluke are giving away such a lens with new Fluke camera purchases and also many people would not realise that these lenses will work in front of most modern thermal cameras that have an approx 24 Degree FOV lens fitted. The mounting is the only real barrier to using them. The seller recently dropped the price of his lens down to £250 which is actually a very good price. Normal retail is over £1200. I made him an offer yesterday as eBay provided a '£15 off spends over £75' voucher for me to use until midnight last night. I am pleased to say the seller accepted and I got the lens for a smidge over £200. A very good price for what it is. Not exactly cheap, but then not much connected with thermal imaging is ! I could always resell these lenses further down the line as I know how to correctly pitch them to thermal camera owners
If well cared for, high quality lenses will always have a good resale market.
So now I have the X2 and X0.5 auxilliary lenses to mount on my E40(E60) and at a fraction of the price FLIR charge for their versions. I know I will need to check the transmission losses etc of the Fluke lenses but I have the required Black Body references and the Exx series permit a calibration offset entry for using custom lenses like those that I will be using
Now the challenging bit for me. I may know a little about thermal imaging cameras, but I am still very much a beginner when it comes to CAD and 3D printing. The Fluke auxilliary lenses appear to use a bayonet mount very similar to that found on Micro 4/3 cameras. The diameter is correct at just under 38mm. The FLIR Exx camera (not the Ex5 series) use a larger diameter bayonet mount. I will need to design an adapter that accepts a 38mm bayonet Micro 4/3 mount and presents an upsized bayonet mount to the Exx camera. This may not be a very complex task for seasoned CAD engineers, but it will be a first for me.
Any hints or tips on producing the required 'wings' of the male and female bayonet mounts is welcomed. I may try to adapt other bayonet mount designs that are on Thingiverse if I get really stuck, but it would be good to know how to make such mounts in case of future need. Thankfully the lenses are quite light so an ABS lens mount adapter should cope OK, and if they break I can just print another
Pictures of the Fluke lenses attached, followed by the genuine FLIR Exx mount lenses. Note that FLIR use aluminium brackets to adapt some of their more exotic lenses to fit on cameras with a different mount. Lens shown in bottom right of FLIR Exx lens group photo. In this case, the bracket attaches to the Exx tripod hard point under the camera lens.
Fraser