Dnk, renting one would meet your needs (3 or 4 times) the most financial way. The EC I work for spent 40K - 50K for the camera I use. We do not use it daily yet, but are close to that goal.
We do predictive preventative maintenance with IR. I am still amazed at some of the problems we have found before a plant has an unplanned outage. We will look at all the electrical equipment in a plant or office facility. A report of our findings is giving to the customer including IR & Digital images of problem areas. At that point the customer can have his in house staff make repairs or hire the EC I work for make them.
Flir makes a nice camera using color around 15K, Fluke makes one around 9.5K color also. Check out a number of cameras before you purchase one. Also ask the salesman if you can try it for a set time period before making a purchase.
Al
