Swann Maxi Day/Night Surveillance Camera
Surveillance cameras are a great addition to anyone's investigation equipment and can make life a lot easier. You can pick up good surveillance cameras for about $100 per, and depending on how large of an area you've got to cover, 4 - 8 cameras is optimal. The cameras we're using are Swann Maxi Day/Night cameras. These cameras have twentyfour LEDs each, which is about what you need for investigating in the dark. Most cameras in the $100 and up price range are going to have a fairly comparable quality picture, so the amount of IR illumination (the number of LEDs) is what separates good cameras from so-so cameras. The Swann cameras come with mounting brackets for permanent installation, but the mounting hole in each of them also fits a standard tripod mount, which is how we set them up.
Swann Maxi Day/Night Surveillance Camera
A couple of things to consider when buying cameras is that if you're going to be using more than one camera, you're going to have to buy either a four or eight camera converter, which takes the signal input from all of your cameras and outputs a single image displaying all of the cameras at once. One of these starts at about $100. Another thing to consider is getting extension cables for the cameras. Most cameras come with only a fairly short length of cable. You can pick up 100-120 ft. extension cables starting at about $20. The last thing you're going to need for your cameras is a display and recording device. A lot of investigators use a small TV and a VCR, or a small TV/VCR combo, but it would also be possible to use a small TV and a DVD recorder. Or the other option, the one that we've chosen, is to convert the signal to digital and record it on the laptop. You can find more info on the last option on the Laptop page.