But why, you ask, would a flasher expose himself if no one can see his offending parts? Get your mind out of the gutter, we’re talking about a new electronic flash that apparently leapfrogs traditional flash technology. Ideally, you want to use natural light or at least adequate artificial light when snapping photos, but sometimes the moment comes along at dusk or in poorly lit rooms.
The new flash, developed by a couple of researchers at New York University (Dilip Krishnan and Rob Fergus), uses ultraviolet (UV) and infrared (IR) light to avoid squinty-eyed portraits and other aesthetically unpleasing effects often associated with shooting in the dark. To make it work, the pair used a flash bulb with a wider light spectrum and then filtered out the visible wavelengths — leaving only IR and UV light.
Samples of the new flash technology can be seen in this gallery published by New Scientist.
The only problem is that while UV and IR light is not visible to the human eye and thus doesn’t cause humans to have red eyes or squint, it produces an unflattering, sterile hue, not unlike a night vision scope. To remedy this, the flash technology snaps a second photo a split-second after the first to capture the color data, as the article explains:
“The second image is dim and blurry, and so it lacks some of the fine detail of its dark flash twin. However, the researchers use software to combine the sharp detail from the first image with the natural colours from the second image, resulting in a remarkably natural end result.”
A few kinks still need to be worked out, as with most new technologies, but the flash holds the promise to shed more light on the darker regions of life.