# X-ray vision - For Real? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 10, 2004, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/x-ray-vision-for-real/233424 "2004-03-10T04:09:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/x-ray-vision-for-real/233424/1 "2004-03-10T04:09:25Z")
- - - I recently bought a cheaper night-vision scope that sometimes needs extra illumination, even if it is in the normally-invisible infared wavelength range. The two main ways to produce infared illumination are to use a filter on a regular light bulb, or use LED’s or laser illumination. While searching online options for infared-pass filters to put on a regular flashlight, I came across this site: [http://www.amasci.com/amateur/irgoggl.html](http://www.amasci.com/amateur/irgoggl.html) -Where this person speaks of making and using inexpensive infared-pass goggles. … - And also be warned, if you look for “IR-pass” filters on the net, you find lots of sites selling videocamera filters expressly for the purpose of looking through people’s clothes–which is how the infamous Sony “NightShot” camera worked. -How _all_ CCD-cameras work really, but anyway. There’s even one company that makes some CD-based “goggles” disguised as reagular-looking sunlgasses. Sorry I cannot post links, because _all_ these places selling IR filters for this purpose have sample images on their sites. * * * —\>But then I got to wondering–suppose you made some of those $10 infared-pass goggles, and wore them for a while. Say, maybe a _year_… …-and then took them off. Would your eyesight in the “normal visible” spectrum have decreased, and your vision in the infared increased? It would only make sense. Have any experiments at all been done in terms of color-conditioning eyesight? Of humans or any other animals? ~ ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Pearse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/richard_pearse/32/13144_2.png) [@Richard\_Pearse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Pearse)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/x-ray-vision-for-real/233424/2 "2004-03-10T05:03:30Z")
> [@DougC](#): > > —\>But then I got to wondering–suppose you made some of those $10 infared-pass goggles, and wore them for a while. > Say, maybe a _year_… > …-and then took them off. > Would your eyesight in the “normal visible” spectrum have decreased, and your vision in the infared increased? It would only make sense. Have any experiments at all been done in terms of color-conditioning eyesight? Of humans or any other animals? > ~ I don’t think so. Your eyes _are_ seeing in the normal visible spectrum when you are wearing IR goggles. The goggles take a spectrum that we can’t see and convert it to a spectrum that we _can_ see – normally either a grey scale or a colour coded scale. So, although your eyes aren’t seeing the usual range of colours associated with normal vision, they are still seeing real everyday colours. There are affects from wearing coloured glasses though, so you’d probably experience some of those. Generally, if you’ve been wearing glasses with a colour tint, when you intially take them of, your perception of colour will be a little off from normal. ---
**Author:** ![BlackPheonix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dfb087/32.png) [@BlackPheonix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackPheonix)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/x-ray-vision-for-real/233424/3 "2004-03-10T05:16:20Z")
Is this looking through clothes thing a hoax? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/x-ray-vision-for-real/233424/4 "2004-03-10T05:23:15Z")
> [@](#): > > Is this looking through clothes thing a hoax? Not a hoax, but overrated. A very few synthetic fibers (rayon comes to mind, but don’t quote me on that) are transparent in the infrared. But even if you should chance to find someone wearing such clothes, you’d still only see a false-color low resolution image. I don’t know about you, but I can think of things more entertaining that seeing false-color blurry bra-clad boobies. ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/x-ray-vision-for-real/233424/5 "2004-03-10T06:13:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > false-color blurry bra-clad boobies. Band name! ---
**Author:** ![umop\_ap\_sdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/dbc845/32.png) [@umop\_ap\_sdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/umop_ap_sdn)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/x-ray-vision-for-real/233424/6 "2004-03-10T07:14:45Z")
Somebody posted a link not too long ago (can’t seem to find it), of a site that sells camera lenses for seeing through clothing. From looking at the pictures, and from my own experience playing with CCDs and such, it seems that the infrared effect is only good for fabrics that get their opacity from dyes used. Most fabrics are dense enough to scatter all light, rendering them translucent, but the ones pictured on that site look like they’d be see-thru if they weren’t colored black. ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/x-ray-vision-for-real/233424/7 "2004-03-10T08:23:47Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Not a hoax, but overrated. A very few synthetic fibers (rayon comes to mind, but don’t quote me on that) are transparent in the infrared. But even if you should chance to find someone wearing such clothes, you’d still only see a false-color low resolution image. Wouldn’t any clothing a person wear for some length of time also radiate heat (IR)? That will make clothing opaque in the IR region. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/x-ray-vision-for-real/233424/8 "2004-03-10T08:37:44Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I don’t know about you, but I can think of things more entertaining that seeing false-color blurry bra-clad boobies. Agreed; to make the experience worthwhile, you should at least need to be able to see the colour of the underwear, like you can when you steal it from a clothes line. ---
**Author:** ![umop\_ap\_sdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/dbc845/32.png) [@umop\_ap\_sdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/umop_ap_sdn)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2004, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/x-ray-vision-for-real/233424/9 "2004-03-10T09:10:38Z")
> [@Urban Ranger](#): > > Wouldn’t any clothing a person wear for some length of time also radiate heat (IR)? That will make clothing opaque in the IR region. You’re confusing thermal infrared with photographic infrared. CCDs typically are only responsive to wavelengths of about 1.2 microns and less. Thermal infrared (blackbody radiation at room temperature) peaks around 10 microns and is totally invisible to CCDs. In fact, 1.2µ is closer to visible light (.38-.76µ) and photographs taken in the .76-1.2µ range typically look like ordinary high contrast photos (except that some things will be abnormally light, and other things will be abnormally dark).