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I find it interesting that these cameras and videos claim to capture photons as they travel through the air. Don't the photons still have to bounce off somethin

I find it interesting that these cameras and videos claim to capture photons as they travel through the air. Don't the photons still have to bounce off something (toward the camera) in order to be imaged by the camera? In other words, can we really "see" the photons/light in the various positions of its apparent journey, or are we still looking at a portion of the photons that have reflected off other particles (such as dust in the air) and made their way to the camera?

wyager 12y ago
Even without dust in the air, you have things like Rayleigh scattering. But yes, we only "see" the photons that were deflected from their original path.
runeks 12y ago
> I find it interesting that these cameras and videos claim to capture photons as they travel through the air. Where do they claim that? A camera needs light to hit a sensor. It can't "sense" the presence of a photon at some arbitrary point in space. That being said, I just bought a 5 mW green laser pointer, which is quite fun to play with. If you point it so the beam is in front of a dark background, you can actually see the light ray. So if we filmed this laser pointer, using the camera in question, we should be able to literally see the light ray move towards the object it's pointed at.