Trivial example: Apple introduces a function that can dim the flash from slight glow to full power. Some person develops a photo app that takes more beautiful softer images of human faces making your product the preferred beauty (selfie) camera.-- beanangel, Apr 30 2018 I just found out that with IR light freckles disappear https://www.reddit....phy_makes_freckles/ [beanangel, May 02 2018] AN improvement to this idea. An item on reddit [link] says that with IR light melanin disappears, so having two different flash leds, one IR, would give the ability to make dots of freckles gone.
That is the other idea: Have more than one flash LED, with different frequencies of light, not just IR, different visibles as well.-- beanangel, May 02 2018 I'm not so sure the softness issue is the brightness, but the wavelength. That's a lot harder to do. But I see that you've considered that as well. Surprising that they haven't done something like this yet.
My advice would be to actually try and patent this.-- RayfordSteele, May 02 2018 I think mostly you'd want to go for colour, not brightness : make soft shots in a soft (ie: red/yellow heavy) light.-- FlyingToaster, May 02 2018 One of the problems with this idea is that you really don't want the flash directed at the camera, unless you are going for a film-noir backlit effect. You really want the flash next to, or even part of, the camera.-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 03 2018 Just how dim would the "flash" have to be to produce a "beauty shot" of [I T] ?
We estimate that turning it off altogether would give the best result ...-- 8th of 7, May 03 2018 random, halfbakery