My wife bought a CED Millennium 2 for me as a Christmas gift. I ordered the IR upgrade before I ever used it so I'm not sure how well it works without the IR. Here in Alaska we shoot quite a bit with snow on the ground and under cloudy conditions. Anyway, using the IR upgrade kit, it is very nice setup. I already had a good Manfrotto tripod so didn't have to buy one as an extra. If you go this route, get the large shooting bag from Midway. Everything will fit in this bag. If you get the IR setup, you will probably also want to get the rechargeable battery pack. One of the things I really like about the CED is that I can bring it home and download all my data using the handy dandy software CED includes with unit. There has been a software update recently but you can download it from the CED web-site.