New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

Don't forget to add one of these to your kit: Long Range Detector

Sorry but there is so much wrong with Infra Red Photography that like long range detectors to me its one of those get rich quick schemes that took off years ago and seemed to just hung around.

1. Yes infra red will pick up any residual heat and temperature differentiation - that's what infra red devices are used for. But there is no way it can discern what element an object is made from, how could it tell the difference between steel, silver, gold, just dense rock, or even concrete. It shows up temperature and shape - all these items can be the same temperature.

2. Think of the size of the gold pieces found. Most of it is sub gram - how could IRP pick this up and how could you separate such a small speck on a photo and say GOLD!? For jewelry and coins the same thing applies - the targets are just too small and you would have to photograph a square metre of area at a time.

3. Buried items do not change temperature like those on the surface - they are insulated by the soil. Thus if IRP did pick up anything it would only be surface finds. Might as well use a detector as it would be faster and more efficient (as well as finding subsurface targets).

4. When you read about it from people actually trailing the method they all say it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Or they scratch their heads wondering if that brighter patch on the pic is the target or not. And this is from those experimenters that have planted the target and know where it is.

5. If it had any merit at all then the large mining and prospecting companies would use it. With the money the spend on aerial surveys etc they would jump upon something like this.

Just my thoughts.