Dark rooms: how the camera still sees something at night
Flashlight, automatic exposure and sound: what helps in the dark, what does not, and why VintageCam deliberately offers no on-screen night light.
An ordinary phone has no infrared night vision. What you can still do to make something out in a dark room is limited, but not nothing. Here is the honest overview.
What a phone can and cannot do at night
Without light, a phone camera sees almost nothing, because there is no infrared light. With a little residual light from the street, hallway or a night light it brightens the picture, but the picture gets grainy. For many purposes that is enough: you can tell whether someone is lying in bed or whether the dog is still in his basket. For details such as facial expression it is not enough.
Brightening automatically
VintageCam adjusts exposure automatically by default. About once a second the app measures the average brightness of the picture and raises the exposure compensation when it is too dark and lowers it when it gets too bright, for example after the flashlight is switched on. Anyone who prefers to control it can switch to manual in the viewer and set the slider themselves. In the browser there is also a “Brighter display” filter that only brightens your picture. It is off by default because it adds to the camera's brightening.
The flashlight
In the viewer you can switch the camera phone's flashlight on and off, even with the screen off. That is helpful when you want to take a quick look, but it does not work permanently, and a lamp in the nursery is rarely what a child needs. For safety reasons the server switches the lamp off again by itself after an adjustable time, 30 minutes by default. There is also “Light on alert”: when an alert goes off, the lamp lights briefly so that the alert photo shows something, and then goes out again.
Why there is no on-screen night light
There used to be an on-screen night light. It was deliberately removed, because it went out as soon as the screen went off and so pretended there was light that was not there. If you need a night light, take a proper one that does not depend on the phone.
Sound replaces the eye
At night sound is usually more important than picture. Sound detection works unchanged in the dark and reports crying, barking or a fall. The alert comes with a photo, which you can view brightened if needed. You should not cover the lens: with the Ultimate add-on a covered lens can count as an alert, but only in light; in the dark it cannot be detected.
Tips for placement
Place the phone so that it does not face bright light sources, because a window or a lamp in the picture makes the rest look even darker. A small, dim night light in the room is often enough to improve the picture noticeably. And before the first night, check what the camera really shows in the dark in the evening.
