is it possible to see through plastic or paper labels using DSLR camera with InfraRed Lense or something?

[difx0]

Hello forum

Was just wandering about something.

After watching about some people using some IR lens effect to "see through peoples clothes"

would it be possible to use some sort of lens and then take a picture of an item that has some plastic label stuck on and see what is under the label? like what text or pictures are under that plastic label?

would anyone have any knowledge on this?

thanks in advance

[Sparda]

Possibly, it depends on the thickness of the label and the electiveness of it. This stuff can only work with cloths because cloths are reactively thin and not particularly dense. Paper can be quite dense but also less dense (think, wall paper vs tracing paper).

Imagine it as been similar to trying to see what a letter inside an envelope says by using a bright light, some frequencies of light might penetrate the out envelope better than others.

[difx0]

Possibly, it depends on the thickness of the label and the electiveness of it. This stuff can only work with cloths because cloths are reactively thin and not particularly dense. Paper can be quite dense but also less dense (think, wall paper vs tracing paper).

Imagine it as been similar to trying to see what a letter inside an envelope says by using a bright light, some frequencies of light might penetrate the out envelope better than others.

Yeah a good example of what I am trying to achieve would be looking inside a paper envelope to see the letters on the latter inside.

Was just wondering what kind of gear I would need for this to work

[h3%5kr3w]

Probably would not need too much as that camera that was produced had an accidental effect (still wonder how good it worked though..)

I am sure it's all to do with how much IR is emitted, what frequency would work best for what material, and how well the CCD/CMOS can receive the IR that is bounced. Thinking maybe sorta the same concept as night vision, or a mix of that and radar.

[FireTime]

I wonder if a scanner would work. If you could find a way to to back light it, instead of front lighting. I think that you could get better resolution with that. I found a little research that some scanning heads detect IR for use with artifact detection. So it may be possible to place an IR filter in front of the scanning head ant block out visible light just like the camera.

--edit

Apparently they make passport/ID scanners that already have this functionality built in.

[barry99705]

http://www.shopwiki.com/_Envelope+x-rey%2C...p;s=193552&

[VaKo]

Think about it, if you can see through the paper envelop, then why is the paper letter going to be visible? The only way this would work is if you had a high power back light that emitted the right frequency's of EM radiation and a detector that could pick these up. The problem with the scanner idea is that scanners are designed to pick up visible light (so what you scan looks like it does when you look at it), and unless you have a negative scanner will work by reflecting the light from the surface to a sensor. If you want to read a letter in the envelope you will need a large format negative scanner that can be modified to emit EM radiation that penetrates paper, but is blocked by ink/toner or a very powerful back light and compress the letter between 2 sheets of glass to cut down on the diffusion of EM radiation by the envelope. You won't be able to take a cheap digital camera, remove something and turn it into an x-ray camera without extensive modification and a controlled environment.

[FireTime]

I guess I left out that the back light should be an IR CCFL. And I found that there are scanners out there there that can be told to only scan for IR. So you would only be scanning the IR that is penetrating the envelope.