Patent ID: 7535504

Claim:
A method for controlling characteristics of a camera, comprising: providing an image sensor comprising a plurality of pixels; filtering image information to a first portion of the plurality of pixels for sensitivity to a selected first spectral region; filtering image information to a second portion of the plurality of pixels for sensitivity to a selected second spectral region; filtering image information to a third portion of the plurality of pixels for sensitivity to a selected third spectral region, wherein less than half of the pixels of the image sensor pixels receive image information filtered to within one of the first, second, or third spectral regions, wherein image information incident on a fourth portion of the plurality of pixels is not filtered to within any one of said first, second, or third spectral regions, and wherein the fourth portion of the plurality of pixels comprises more than half of the plurality of pixels of the image sensor; and at least one of: 1) filtering image information incident on the plurality of pixels of the image sensor to remove at least near infrared wavelengths from the image information; 2) filtering image information to a fifth portion of the plurality of image sensor pixels, wherein at least visible and near infrared wavelengths are blocked from reaching the fifth portion of pixels.