The Dark Flash Camera

In some venues, flash photography is not allowed, making available low light photography impossible unless you own one of those low noise high resolution digital SLR. Computer scientist Rob Fergus thinks he may have found the answer with a “dark flash” — a flash that emits IR and UV light, light outside the visible spectrum.

To use a dark-flash camera, you basically take two photos of the same scene in quick succession: one photo in ambient light (regardless of how dark the environment is) and one in the ultraviolet and infrared light provided by the dark flash. You then merge the best characteristics of each photo in post processing. It is conceivably possible to do this processing in-camera in the future.

Combining pictures taken this way actually produces a high enough quality picture though with the colors a bit off and some details missing.

Read the article at: popular mechanics