Camreras & Accessories News

Icy application for mini cameras

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:57

The IK-HR1P

Miniature camera specialists SeeSense recently supplied four of their IK-HR1P cameras for use in sub glacial Antarctica on the Lake Ellsworth Expedition.

The IK-HR1P is in fact a Toshiba IK-HR1S 1-CMOS HD C-mount camera especially modified to CS-mount by SeeSense.

“The modification was crucial for this application as the client had very stringent lens requirements” said SeeSense MD Nigel Paine. “The cameras are to be deployed three kilometres beneath the Antarctic ice sheet and the titanium housing containing the cameras has to resist the huge pressures at that depth. It is essential that the viewing port be as small as possible, which means that a small diameter lens was required. This has been chosen from the more comprehensive selection of suitable CS-mount lenses. SeeSense was able to source, test and supply a compact CS-mount wide angle megapixel lenses that just did not exist in the C-mount form.”

The camera also benefits from the fact that the lenses supplied were faster than most equivalent wide angle megapixel C-mount lenses. This is essential as they effectively increase the cameras’ working sensitivity thereby helping to realise their full potential at the bottom of a buried lake.

SeeSense, who is an official sponsor of the Lake Ellsworth Project, has supplied all of the cameras that will see use in several probes three kilometres under the Antarctic ice sheet.

This will be the first time that these sub glacial lakes have been explored. They were covered by ice over 150,000 years ago and could contain microbial life that could shed new light on evolution of life in harsh conditions.

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