Hello Everyone.
Thank you all so much for you comments! I really appreciate the notes and advice.
In terms of "what" and "why" I feel it might help to explain myself a bit better.
I have been watching the consumer thermal camera community for a while now, and have personally loved viewing every image and video I could find showing the world around us in "high-quality" thermal (as high quality as technology currently allows). And so have been saving up to purchase my own high quality camera over a period of some time. I already nearly have enough to purchase one of the cameras along the lines of a Thermal Expert Q1+, and so that will likely happen in the coming months without any help from the Go Fund Me page.
The idea of the YouTube channel is that thermography has become a bit of a hobby for me and I find great joy in looking at all the little things around us through a thermal camera (albeit 80x60 pixels currently). So I will be taking those pictures and videos for my personal enjoyment no matter what. I just thought since it's something I will be doing anyway, I might as well start a channel featuring anything interesting I find from my own experiences. I would almost certainly end up posting over a hundred videos over time, showing off a very wide variety of things. Some would be technical, but most would just be for the thermography itself. That kind of a channel I have not seen before, and it is one that I wish existed. So I plan on making it myself. And I'm sure there are other people out there who would enjoy it as well.
But I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to start a channel with the hopes that it will be profitable, or get a certain quota of views. That's irrelevant to me, which is why I'm not worried about exactly how much interest is out there. If even one other person finds it as interesting as I do, it will have been worth it.
And speaking of audience, again I have no specific audience in mind. I have posted my Go Fund Me page here, as well as several other places. I understand most people on this forum are more technical, and more inclined to want to buy their own camera as opposed to fund mine, but this is a place where topical interest is guaranteed, so I thought I'd cast out my line, and see if I could get a few bites.
Now, as far as the Go Fund Me page, the purpose of that page is to see if I can gather enough interest that instead of getting a Thermal Expert Q1+, I could instead upgrade to something like the Thermal Expert V1, which would produce much nicer, cleaner video for something like a YouTube channel. Then, if there *really* was enough interest, it would give me the opportunity to purchase more than one camera and compare. But I'll be honest - I wasn't expecting to get that kind of interest.
Truthfully, I wasn't *expecting* any particular amount of interest. The whole idea is very much a "let's see if" kind of thing. So far there hasn't been much interest, and that's ok because I wasn't expecting much. This would just be a way where, if I got more interest, I could make better quality productions for others. But for just my personal use, the Thermal Expert Q1+ will be more than enough.
So hopefully that helps everyone understand where I'm coming from a bit better.
And who knows, maybe as consumer thermal cameras become more popular, my channel may raise enough money to upgrade at a later date. The market is certainly moving fast.
And finally, thank you all again for the comments and interest!
- Luke Abbott