really wierd thing with isight!

[i-unit123]

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]

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]

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

 

[runninmac]

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.

 

[tobyg]

It's well known and perfectly normal. It's not unique to the iSight at all, either.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302549

Read the section titled "Use the built-in iSight to test your Apple Remote"

 

[MacAnkka]

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]

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]

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.