According to the invention a novel illumination device (10) is proposed for illuminating a gun barrel (12) for visually inspecting the inside of the gun barrel with a video camera. The illumination device (10) essentially consists of an incandescent lamp (18) to whose socket (holder) (16) a cone mirror (22) is fitted. The cone mirror (22) introduced into the direct beam path between the incandescent lamp (18) and the objective (14) of the video camera shields the filament (20) of the incandescent lamp (18) and thus prevents screen burns from developing on the photo-electric coating of the video camera, even in the case of incident light which impinges over a longer time and is intensive. <IMAGE>
