We have recently phased out the Panasonic DV cameras in favour of Sony, because of the latter's brilliant low light filming capability.

The sound recording is high quality, but the inbuilt microphone does pick up a little mechanical noise from the camera. A separate microphone can help, but then portability is reduced.

As well as operating as data-gathering devices during investigation, DV cameras are useful for filming interviews with consenting subjects, and recording background goings-on of our team activities, such as unusual equipment setups.

Stills cameras. We would generally use the big digital SLR (Fuji Finepix S3 Pro), an Olympus E-10 digital (used to take the picture), at least one film camera, and a couple of compact digital cameras. However, compact cameras are inclined to show up false positive readings - see this page.

Digital cameras are more able to see into the infrared spectrum than regular film cameras, (except if special film is used, but this is generally unavailable these days). It is possible to fit infrared filters to the lens and flash in order to enhance this capability. (Although, it has to be said, we don't know why IR photography should be any more useful in our field than visible light photography.)

The Hasselblad SWC - Super Wide Camera - a medium-format film camera that can take in most of a room in one shot.

As professional photographers, Mark and James of Strange Occurrences understand how cameras, lenses and light sources work and behave at a physical level, and so we are usually able to identify and explain the causes of unusual or apparently paranormal effects in photographs. While we remain open minded, we have yet to see a convincing photograph of an apparition.

We feel that photography is useful in gathering evidence during an investigation, in the hope that, when it is stacked up alongside other types of data, it may lend evidential weight to findings. We don't actually expect to photograph a ghost! And if we did, being pro photographers, probably no one would believe us anyway :-)

Photographs can be useful as objective records of a room or site. For instance, if it is claimed during an investigation that a table moved, a photo taken earlier could show the original position of the table. Also, photos taken of the same area using different cameras can be used to eliminate the anomolies of a particular camera.