Someone that checked out the webcam page last night asked me how I could stand to have a spotlight on me like that.  At first I thought she was speaking figuratively, meaning that having a webcam in general was putting a “spotlight” on my life or something…   but then I realized that she was talking about the spotlight effect that you see when the night vision mode is turned on. 

I guess it’s been a long time since I’ve talked about the camera part of the webcam setup, so I can understand why people might think there is an actual visible spotlight in whatever darkened room that I’m in.  But what you are seeing is actually infrared light…  not visible to the naked eye.

I use a Sony Hi8mm camcorder as the video source for the webcam, and the particular camera that I’ve got has NightShot and Super NightShot modes.  The first allows the camera to see better due to the non-visible infrared illumination, and the second mode combines the IR vision with a slow shutter - allowing even more light to enter the camera to be captured by the webcam program.

So when you see me or my friends in a dark room and it looks like we have a bright spotlight on us - it’s just the IR lights and NightShot mode.  It’s actually still quite dark where we are.