Kickstarter: Sunscreenr Is a UV Camera Designed To See If You Have Applied Enough Sunscreen

Here at PopPhoto.com, we’re primarily concerned with cameras that are used for artistic and documentary purposes, but it’s always interesting to see camera tech being use for practical applications—and maybe not-so-practical as well. The Sunscreenr Kickstarter (which is already fully funded at the time of this writing) is a UV spectrum camera designed to help you ensure that every area of your exposed skin is covered with sunscreen.

It sounds outlandish, but it’s based on a pretty straight forward idea regarding the interaction between UV waves and sunscreen. The Sunscreenr doesn’t have a bayer filter, a UV filter, or UV-blocking coatings on the lenses (all of which are pretty common in the photography world), so it’s able to record outside the visible spectrum we’re used to. In the resulting black-and-white images, the white areas are uncovered, while the darker areas of skin are sunblocked.

I’m not a scientist who can evaluate whether or not this is totally effective, so be the judge on your own, but it’s interesting to see that a product like this, that serves one very specific purpose, can get totally funded in a hurry. It’s a very narrow product and it costs $84 if you want your choice of colors, but I can see this being very handy if you work in the sun every day, or for a business with a pool or other outside areas and employees.

Check out the Kickstarter page.