[Modern Firepower] Technothriller gear for secret DHS team in 2017

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Ok, cool.

What about tripods? Any suggestions for good ones for very long-range photography?

I second the suggestion for a video head for the tripod. Then you'd need a tripod that is sturdy enough to carry all that weight. You can get a tripod for more than $1000 (a Gitzo in carbon fiber) or you can get them cheaper.

A question or two come to mind, what do you mean by very long-range photography? What distance do you figure will be between the camera and subject?

Also, I'd suggest something like the 24-120 lens mentioned before if the photographer wanted to photograph someone close by.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

I second the suggestion for a video head for the tripod. Then you'd need a tripod that is sturdy enough to carry all that weight. You can get a tripod for more than $1000 (a Gitzo in carbon fiber) or you can get them cheaper.

Well, if US Customs could plausibly have had the tripod in stores, O'Toole won't care about price, because he won't have to pay it.

Otherwise, he will probably want good value, a light tripod sturdy enough for the camera and lens. He might be willing to pay extra for a powered pan-tilt model that could be controlled remotely.

Originally Posted by Þorkell

A question or two come to mind, what do you mean by very long-range photography? What distance do you figure will be between the camera and subject?

Well, for surveillance, as long as possible. The point of a telephoto lens and tripod for surveillance is to enable an agent to follow and document what is happening further away than he could otherwise see, allowing him to be hidden from the Mark 1 eyeballs of the subjects.

Originally Posted by Þorkell

Also, I'd suggest something like the 24-120 lens mentioned before if the photographer wanted to photograph someone close by.

Sure. The camera is usually issued as a crime scene camera and the 24-120mm lens seems intended for that use, so it's plausible that it would be packaged with it in a crime scene kit.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Well, if US Customs could plausibly have had the tripod in stores, O'Toole won't care about price, because he won't have to pay it.

They'll have big sturdy, heavy, tripods, since you need them with long lenses. With lenses over about 400mm focal length, the lens attaches to the tripod, and the camera body is attached to the lens,

He might be willing to pay extra for a powered pan-tilt model that could be controlled remotely.

DHS probably doesn't have many of those, and they'll spend most of their time out with surveillance projects. This is because they're a fun gadget to play with, and a new shiny piece of technology.

Well, for surveillance, as long as possible. The point of a telephoto lens and tripod for surveillance is to enable an agent to follow and document what is happening further away than he could otherwise see, allowing him to be hidden from the Mark 1 eyeballs of the subjects.

A little work with a spreadsheet has given me a table of distances and focal lengths. This gives you the range in yards at which the area in the picture with that D7000 is about 10' high and 15' wide.

Focal length, mm   Distance, yards
200                43
300                65
400                86
500                106
600                127
800                177
1000               212
1200               265
2000               424

A 2x teleconverter will double those distances, but costs you half a level of Night Vision.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

I've seen a few trucks and SUVs that can be plugged in to run AC and electronics off external power such as from a generator

More often seen such trucks just sit there with the motor running

Using a pickup as a self propelled office can be very common

The truck won't be rigged to run off a generator, but it might be able to run the AC and electronics off some back-up batteries that can recharge from solar panels as well as the motor.

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

As a note, my father once when allowed to choose his own company car chose a F150 4x4 over more luxurious offerings due to his feeling it possessed more cred as an actual work vehicle when he rolled up at a job site

A white 2016 Ford F-350 Super Duty Platinum, armored and loaded with after-market electronics, will probably not look much like a work vehicle.

Well, unless the work is 'pharmaceutical import-export facilitation'.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

They'll have big sturdy, heavy, tripods, since you need them with long lenses. With lenses over about 400mm focal length, the lens attaches to the tripod, and the camera body is attached to the lens,

Ah, I didn't know that! How big and heavy would a tripod designed for 800-1000mm lens be?

Originally Posted by johndallman

DHS probably doesn't have many of those, and they'll spend most of their time out with surveillance projects. This is because they're a fun gadget to play with, and a new shiny piece of technology.

Agreed, as far as my own knowledge extends, i.e. I am not aware that our own police use remotely-controllable tripods for surveillance.

Though GURPS High-Tech (pub. 2007) makes no mention of them being exotic new equipment at that time, so some form of the technology has been commercially available for ca $1,000 for at least ten years.

Originally Posted by johndallman

A little work with a spreadsheet has given me a table of distances and focal lengths. This gives you the range in yards at which the area in the picture with that D7000 is about 10' high and 15' wide.

Focal length, mm   Distance, yards
200                43
300                65
400                86
500                106
600                127
800                177
1000               212
1200               265
2000               424

A 2x teleconverter will double those distances, but costs you half a level of Night Vision.

Great! Thanks. And as the Night Vision you calculated was 3.5, adding the 2x teleconverter would yield a net Night Vision 3. 800-1000mm ought to be approaching an acceptable distance.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Ah, I didn't know that! How big and heavy would a tripod designed for 800-1000mm lens be?

(get out his own amateur-grade tripod and weighs it)

OK, a professional-grade tripod will weigh about 10lb. The legs are telescopic, so it collapses down to a package about 24" long and 6" diameter. It takes about ten seconds to deploy or pack up.

The basic attachment system for camera or lens to a tripod is a standardised screw thread: a bolt on the tripod goes into a socket on the lens or tripod. This is often supplemented with a quick attach/release system: a pair of metal plates, one of which bolts to the tripod head, the other to the camera or lens. The plates have various interlocking mechanisms, depending on manufacturer, so you have to buy them in sets.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Ah, I didn't know that! How big and heavy would a tripod designed for 800-1000mm lens be?

My tripod (A Sirui N-2205X) weighs 2.6 lbs and has a load capacity of 26.5 lbs. I have a Sirui K-20x ball head, which weighs 0.88 lbs. This is perfectly adequate equipment for an 800-1000mm lens.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Great! Thanks. And as the Night Vision you calculated was 3.5, adding the 2x teleconverter would yield a net Night Vision 3. 800-1000mm ought to be approaching an acceptable distance.

A lens of that range (800-1000mm) would be an 1600-2000mm with that converter. At that range you have issues with heat at range (hitamistur) which would affect the final image quality.

Warning, photo geekery!
A Nikon D7000 is a DX format camera which means it has a smaller than 35mm image sensor. I presume the ranges jonhdallman calculated assume a 35mm sensor. For example a 100mm lens on such a body has the same field of view as a 150mm lens on a body with a 35mm sensor. In effect there is a built in teleconverter because of this, and this is something bird photographers and some sports photographers take advantage of, since there isn't a light loss penalty as with a detachable teleconverter. I presume that law enforcement is aware of this as well and that's one of the reasons the D7000 was chosen.

[johndallman]

I looked up the dimensions of the DX sensor and converted. On 'phone, can post more later.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

My tripod (A Sirui N-2205X) weighs 2.6 lbs and has a load capacity of 26.5 lbs. I have a Sirui K-20x ball head, which weighs 0.88 lbs. This is perfectly adequate equipment for an 800-1000mm lens.

A lens of that range (800-1000mm) would be an 1600-2000mm with that converter. At that range you have issues with heat at range (hitamistur) which would affect the final image quality.

Warning, photo geekery!
A Nikon D7000 is a DX format camera which means it has a smaller than 35mm image sensor. I presume the ranges jonhdallman calculated assume a 35mm sensor. For example a 100mm lens on such a body has the same field of view as a 150mm lens on a body with a 35mm sensor. In effect there is a built in teleconverter because of this, and this is something bird photographers and some sports photographers take advantage of, since there isn't a light loss penalty as with a detachable teleconverter. I presume that law enforcement is aware of this as well and that's one of the reasons the D7000 was chosen.

Originally Posted by johndallman

I looked up the dimensions of the DX sensor and converted. On 'phone, can post more later.

That would be awesome.

Note that the D7000 was chosen (by me) because there was evidence that the the FLETC (who train all federal agents except the FBI and DEA) taught crime scene photography to ordinary agents using it, and had done for years, thus making it all but certain that any federal law enforcement agency would have several in inventory. As I could also find evidence that 'new' crime scene cameras on the Southwest border were D7100, it seemed like a safe bet O'Toole could nab one of the older models, despite not having any legitimate need for a crime scene camera.

Onyx Rain almost certainly don't want the PCs sprawling their limited assignment into an extended stay in Mexico. But one of the things you have to accept when you are a small conspiracy is that your agents may have quite a bit of autonomy, whether you want them to or not.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

A Nikon D7000 is a DX format camera which means it has a smaller than 35mm image sensor. I presume the ranges jonhdallman calculated assume a 35mm sensor. For example a 100mm lens on such a body has the same field of view as a 150mm lens on a body with a 35mm sensor. In effect there is a built in teleconverter because of this, and this is something bird photographers and some sports photographers take advantage of, since there isn't a light loss penalty as with a detachable teleconverter.

I was well aware of that - I use a Pentax DSLR with a near-identical size sensor. The table of Nikon lenses gave diagonal angles of view for a 24x36mm frame, but the D7000 has a 15.6x23.6mm frame.

The height and width of the area in-view at a range seemed like the easiest things for a non-photo-geek to work with. Since collections of people and maybe cars seemed like plausible things to be photographing, I picked a frame 10' high and 15' wide. That assumes the camera and lens are set up in landscape orientation, which seems likely. I then set out to calculate its range for each focal length.

The diagonal of the 24x36mm frame is 43.27mm, so I multiplied the coverage angles by 15.6/43.27 (about 0.36) , which gives me the vertical angle of view on the D7000's smaller sensor (aka built-in telephoto). The answers ranged from 4.5 to 0.45 degrees for 200-2000mm lenses. I then converted that to radians, and approximated the distance in feet as 10' divided by the angle in radians, then converted to yards.

I presume that law enforcement is aware of this as well and that's one of the reasons the D7000 was chosen.

Personally, I'd reckon that the lower price for a DX sensor would also have been influential.