Behind the Lens

3.7Seeing the Invisible, Part I: Dealing with Infrared Contamination (Red Epic Test)

Let’s take a brief trip back to high school science class and talk a little bit about the electromagnetic spectrum.

Sound waves, radio waves, or gamma waves are all part of a larger range of waves called the electro-magnetic spectrum, which covers from one angstrom (one ten-billionth of a meter or one tenth of a nanometer) all the way up to AM radio at over 100m in wave length and beyond. A tiny little portion of this spectrum, from about 400nm to 700nm is light. This is how we see the world—these wavelengths in this small area of the spectrum—interacting with physical objects around us. This is sometimes referred to as visible light, but that’s a redundant term. ...