Videos: This Camera Shoots Color Video Even In Darkness

Serkan Toto

Dr. Serkan Toto is an independent consultant and advisor focusing on Japan’s web, mobile and social gaming industries. Based in Tokyo, he works together with financial institutions and startups worldwide. Serkan has been the Japan contributor for TechCrunch.com since 2008. He is sept-lingual, holds an MBA and is a PhD in economics. → Learn More

Thursday, March 3rd, 2011


Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has developed a security camera that shoots video in color even in pitch-black conditions. The so-called Color Night Vision Camera [JP], produced by AIST spin-off company Nanolux [JP], uses infrared to reproduce the red, blue, and green colors of objects.

As you can see in the video embedded below (in English, shot by Diginfonews Tokyo), the quality isn’t very high at this point, but it’s a pretty impressive piece of technology already:

According to Nanolux, a commercial version of the prototype will follow by year-end.

Here’s another video (Japanese only). In the clip you can see the reporter’s brown hair being shown in green, but Nanolux president Kim says they’re working on it: