What Does An Infrared Camera Do

If you work as a firefighter, you probably have used a thermal imaging camera before. In fact, you may use it every time you go to a fire because it is very useful at finding people without actually being able to see them with your eyes. An infrared camera is very much the same thing. These cameras allow you to see things that you normally would be able to because of smoke or fog because instead of picking up the light of the object like a normal camera they pick up heat.

In a burning building there is, of course, heat all around you. However, with a thermal imaging camera you will be able to see body heat from a person. This camera will give you a distinct outline of the person and you will be able to tell exactly where they are and you will know they are a person and not just part of the fire. You will also be able to use a thermal imaging camera to locate the hottest part of the fire because it will show up in a different color than the rest of the flames.

This is not the only great use of this type of product however. There are many reasons that infrared cameras could be useful because there are many reasons why someone would need to know the temperatures of different parts of an object. For example, astronomers use infrared thermal imaging to determine the temperature and therefore the size and distance of stars and planets. Construction workers may use infrared cameras to determine where a problem lies in faulty wiring. And these are still just a few reasons why someone would need this type of camera. It has a myriad amount of uses and there are still more being discovered.

Infrared thermal imaging works because it picks up the heat in different objects. Different temperatures show up on the thermal imaging camera as different colors. That means that the person watching the device will be able to see an exact picture of whatever they are looking at in an array of colors that symbolize the temperature of all the different parts. So if one part of a wire is overheating, it will appear as a different color than the rest of the wire. Infrared thermal imaging can be invaluable to many different people and that’s why if you work in a field where heat could play a factor in doing your job, you should definitely get an infrared camera.