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The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night

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gusnyc.com
07/17/09

In reply to The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night

title reminded me of this.
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TheCrudMan
07/17/09

In reply to The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night
Or they could eventually just start selling phones with cameras that don't suck and use faster glass (or you know, glass) and bigger sensors w/o trying to cram in megapixels.
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philibuster
07/17/09

@TheCrudMan: We can't all be expected to tote around f/0.5 lenses. The DOF would be razor thin too.
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TheCrudMan
07/17/09

@philibuster:
How about f/1.4

Since when is razor thin DOF a bad thing? Photographers and filmmakers alike lust after it.
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Castleknight75
07/17/09

In reply to The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night
But the bright flash in the night is all the fun... think about how many photos you have of your friends pupils dilated for the darkness, and they pain you give them by taking the surprise picture...
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scrag
07/17/09

In reply to The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night
As neat as this is (and it's very neat), we need those UV and IR filters if you're going to be shooting under "normal" conditions. I'm sure there's even conditions in which this would be problematic at night.
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NurseDave
07/17/09

In reply to The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night
But of course there's a reason there's an IR filter on cameras in the first place. So unless you want your camera dedicated to mug shots or just at the club....
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randlsa
07/17/09

@NurseDave: I wonder if any filters could be placed in a circuit to be utilized only when needed?
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philibuster
07/17/09

@randlsa: Sony nightshot has a moveable IR filter.
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banmojo
07/17/09

In reply to The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night
Hah! I just got the mental picture of a bunch of mafia goons all piling out of a bunch of Yugos (Yugoes?) - that'd be hilarious dude! "TGIF boyz!!
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JawzX2: Hoon The Earth @ www.cafepress.com/jawzx2
07/17/09

In reply to The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night
I've done IR flash for years, never thought of taking the color data from a second image and combining it though. it's the little moments of brilliance that make something old new again.
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bornonbord
07/17/09

In reply to The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night
After too many caipirinhas, my hands are hardly steady enough for a camera to snap one photo WITH a flash, let alone two consecutive photos of the exact same thing.
What kinda shutter speeds are they talking about?
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TheSonOfKrypton
07/17/09

In reply to The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night
So.....................the phone in question would STILL need to have a bulb to utilize this technique. Problem solved, indeed.
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MiltoxBeyond
07/17/09

@TheSonOfKrypton:An Invisible Bulb... It's like magic... with a dash of Awesome... and only a pinch of seeming pointlessness
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psychiccheese
07/17/09

@TheSonOfKrypton: it's for secret spy pictures, when you don't want the subject to know they're being photographed.
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randlsa
07/17/09

@psychiccheese: they would know because the second shutter uses flash to bring in color. Essentially this would appear the same as all other digital night shots except that a very fast first shot would go undetected. What I don't understand though is this only to eliminate red eye?And, how sensitive would it be to motion? I'm guessing that it would depend entirely on first to second shot timing.
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lilaliendog
07/17/09

In reply to The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night
I can never see this ever being useful aside from static images and even then unless the scene is controlled you will get blurry images no matter what since this relies on 2 images to be combined.
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junyo
07/17/09

@lilaliendog: Pretty sure all it uses the second image for is color correction data. But yeah, since you've still gotta fire the regular flash to get that data, why bother?
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JawzX2: Hoon The Earth @ www.cafepress.com/jawzx2
07/17/09

@junyo: the idea is, that the second image DOES NOT use the flash, it cranks up the iso to get a grainy -possibly blurry- image that is used solely to determine color that then gets applied to the first IR/UV image taken with the "invisible" flash. Sony had moving IR filters in a number of its imaging products years ago, if that technology were to be applied this could be totally workable, if expensive to implement... the good news for phones is the small image sensors mean only tiny filters will have to be moved and that can be done quite rapidly and high-output IR LEDs are literally a dime a dozen...
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GlenTen promoted this comment Edited by JawzX2: Hoon The Earth @ www.cafepress.com/jawzx2 at 07/17/09 9:20 AM

Bandit
07/17/09

@junyo: The second photo does not fire the regular flash.
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LordGriffin
07/17/09

In reply to The Invisible Flash That Takes Clear Pictures at Night
Why do I have a feeling that if we're STARTING to see it now that the military has been using it to kill people for YEARS.

Either way, this is awesome! Can they incorporate this tech into video cameras, too?
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junyo
07/17/09

@LordGriffin: If you just want to kill people in the dark, they've been making starlight NV scopes for decades. The secret part is a tiny camera in the bullet that takes a picture a millisecond before impact, tags it with "p0wned!!!", and posts it to the DOD's facebook account.
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Maximillian
07/17/09

@LordGriffin: Video wouldn't work unless it were capturing at double the frame rate (you need an extra, non-illuminated frame for color).

I think we should all just be happy with the cameras that see through clothing in 'night' mode.
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LordGriffin
07/18/09

@Maximillian: A few days ago, Giz posted on a camera that shot at 600 fps. I don't think "double frame rate" is going to be a problem, there. Just ghosting and the time it would take to render the final movies.
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