Martin,
Really liked the episode QTV#4 with the Fluke and FLIR comparison. I jumped into the thermal camera game when the I series was popular. I have an I7 which is really good, and you are correct in saying they have a 1,001 uses. I was a bit sad when Flir announced the E-Series only months after I purchased the I7, but that's the way technology moves. Over last fall, I pointed my FLIR at an open part of the sky in between clouds at night and was amazed and amused at the reading, it was 15 degrees while the ground temp was around 70. Not sure how accurate that was, but it was cool to see the difference between the open sky and the clouds. Another crazy result I found purely by accident was during an energy audit I lowered the camera, and it was pointed at the legs of a friend that was with me and wearing shorts, you could see the main arteries in his legs. Very cool. The sensitivity and ability to see very small changes in temp (I think about .1 degree) is what makes the FLIR superior.
I will say that anyone interested in getting into a thermal imager needs to spend a bit of time learning about science of thermal imagers. Emmisitivty is very important and knowing what it does and how if affects a thermal image camera or even an IR thermometer is very important. It is really easy to be fooled into thinking something is cold or colder when it is very hot, it just depends on the reflectivity of that object. They are quite a few great training videos on Youtube on the science of thermal imaging. If I can find them again, I'll post the links here.
