Can anyone tell me the proper setup for backround temperature when conducting an Infrared survey of a substation outdoors.

Our camera has a setup for background temperature and also for atmospheric temperature.

Thanks
Dick

For Background Temp it is the reflected apparent temperature that you need to input. The camera needs to compensate for this to achieve accurate temperature results.

One method to calculate what this should be set at is to aim your camera at a piece of crinkled aluminum foil, placed close to the component you want to measure the temperature using the area average function. Do this with an emissivity of the area set at 1, and the distance to zero.
You then enter the result of the area average as your figure for the Background temp (T Refl). Do not forget to reset your emissivity and distance after you have finished.

However you should remember that a temperature measurement taken with Infrared on a target with an emmisivity of less than about 0.6 should be viewed as unreliable.

For atmospheric temperature you need to use a seperate thermometer or to measure something that is already at ambient.