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Hold it, hold it... so vampires' reflections don't appear in mirrors, but most phone cameras don't use mirrors, just like 'mirrorless' (non-DSLR) cameras, the light goes directly through the lens and onto the sensor. So they should be visible on any newer cameras without the traditional mirror redirecting light from a viewfinder to film or digital sensor.
/shittyscientist
It’s about the soul. Vampires don’t cast reflections because they are soulless. Cameras have been criticized for stealing peoples souls. Ergo, a camera would suffer the same fate as the mirror: no soul to capture or reflect.
But I mean it’s just made up lore. That’s admittedly stretched thin.
And yet.... *points at pictures of Ed Sheeron
/shittysciencewinsagain!
In Daybreakers the vampire society uses cameras and monitors since they don't show up in mirrors.
Classically, mirrors used silver metal, and black and white photographs used silver halide. So strictly speaking, a digital or even color film camera would work.
I'm pretty sure those sensors use silver, which won't capture the vampire's image.
Not an expert, but CMOS sensors (which are the ones used in cameras? I think?) do not use silver, do they? It's practically all silicon. (CMOS = Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor, where the semiconductor is Si, the metal is Al or more recently Poly-Si and the Oxide is SiO2 obtained by oxidizing the Si)
Unless Si also prevents vampire images from being seen? Does vampire lore explicitly say that all materials were tested and only Silver has anti-vampire properties?
I could be wrong on any of the info I just told you, even a cursory Google search can fail me.
Don't the sensor connectors contain silver in the micro wires though?
Does vampire lore explicitly say that all materials were tested and only Silver has anti-vampire properties?
I don't think so. I think it's just old world mythology that silver is pure, and therefore the purity won't reflect the evil of the vampire. But every element is pure, so it doesn't make a lot of sense.
I've always used Al and Au in mine but I'm in a research institute and so I can't speak for what people use in real cameras, but it does appear that Ag is somewhat used in wire bonding, so you can be right!
But every element is pure, so it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Was this purity in the sense of "absence of impurities" or "absence of evil"? Because if it's the latter I'm pretty sure I've met a few Si wafers with evil agendas.
I asked ChatGPT and this is what it told me:
In traditional vampire lore, the inability for vampires to cast a reflection in mirrors is often attributed to the idea that they lack a soul. This concept has been widely popularized in literature, film, and other media.
Traditional film cameras use a mirror to reflect the image onto the film (in the case of SLRs), while digital SLRs use a mirror to reflect the image onto a digital sensor. If we follow the lore strictly, a vampire wouldn't appear in these photographs.Modern smartphone cameras, as you correctly pointed out, do not use mirrors; they use digital sensors to capture images directly. If the folklore's basis for invisibility in photos is strictly tied to the presence of mirrors, then theoretically, a vampire would appear in a smartphone photograph.
However, the interpretation of vampire lore varies. Some versions might suggest that it's not just mirrors that prevent their appearance but any form of reflection or reproduction. In that case, even smartphone cameras might fail to capture them.
Wait, the "vampires don't have reflections" doesn't include their clothes? Which means any fully-reflectionless vampire is nude?
Don't go to the house of mirrors exhibit in Transylvania.
They never know if they're having a bad hair day..
Now that's funny