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i-unit123

macrumors member
Original poster
May 26, 2006
78
0
hey,

i dont know if all cameras are like this, but the isight can see the infrared light coming out of my TV remote, that is invisible to the human eye. in the isight pics the infrared light from the remote looks blue, but you cant see it in reality. really wierd. is this unique to isight, or do all cameras do this? if so, why?
 

Zwhaler

macrumors 604
Jun 10, 2006
7,085
1,558
When you say unique to iSight, do you mean unique to your iSight, or to everyones iSight. I've never seen it do that, but that's really cool.
 

i-unit123

macrumors member
Original poster
May 26, 2006
78
0
i guess im wondering both. do normal webcams do this? do other peoples isights do this? some reports would be interesting. heres a pic btw. and yea, you cant see that light from the remote with the human eye. its cool
 

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runninmac

macrumors 65816
Jan 20, 2005
1,494
0
Rockford MI
Mine does that too, and Ive seen videos of people doing it online so i would have to say its normal for all cameras to pick up.
 

MacAnkka

macrumors regular
Jun 30, 2006
199
0
Finland
Pretty much all digital camera sensors can receive IR light. Most of them just have a small filter that reduces IR light right in front of the sensor. If you have a camera with no ir-filter (or with a IR filter that doesn't block all of it) and you use a filter that blocks all visible light, but lets IR-light through, you can take some nice pictures. Everything is black and white, but, for example Pepsi/coca-cola is totally transparent and some black things are totally white (and vice versa). In other words, some materials reflect IR-light differently than visible light.
 

Mac Rules

macrumors 6502a
Jul 15, 2006
630
665
Europe
Its not unusual, most of the sensors used in digital cameras are sensitive to IR light, so its no suprise iSight picks it up. Try it with your mobile phone camera to impress your mates...

Cheers
 

MustardMan

macrumors member
Apr 26, 2005
47
0
Back when I was a PC/linux nerd, I ripped apart one of the original parallel port black-and-white quickcams. The first thing I did was remove the IR filter - it made an awesome night vision security camera.
 
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