The Pi camera module includes a red LED in one corner of the PCB. This lights up when the camera is active. It’s really useful in giving a visual indication that the camera is doing something and most of the time you will be glad it is there.
However there are a number of reasons you might wish it wasn’t.
In my testing here are some of the reasons it can get in the way :
It can cause reflections on objects you are trying to photograph giving them a red glow.
For nature photography it scares animals.
For security applications it may draw unnecessary attention to the device.
Raspberry Pi Camera Board – The Raspberry Pi Camera Module is a custom designed add-on for Raspberry Pi. It attaches to Raspberry Pi by way of one of the two small sockets on the board upper surface. This interface uses the dedicated CSI interface, which was designed especially for interfacing to cameras. The CSI bus is capable of extremely high data rates, and it exclusively carries pixel data. (read more)
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