Cameras

Everything digital nowadays. But sometimes- just sometimes, the old way is better.

Just like when sometimes bows are better than guns, sometimes old school film cameras (including movie cameras) are better than their digital equivelants? And why is that? Because they're optical!

A film camera makes a flash of light and an image is burned into the photographic negative, which must then be manually developed in a lab (or via polaroid). What this means is that the image is as optical as a mirror. While this doesn't help most video cameras (especially as far as displaying things on a monitor), it means that film based cameras record things as people do, and are not auto-tricked by trid phantasm.

They have no intelligence or willpower, so any illusion will affect them, unless it's specifically designated to hit machines and not people. (Most spells like that are used as counter-rutheneum measures). In any case, this may be something to keep in mind when dealing with the invisible to machines.

Granted- a mage can't target through the picture (though he could target through the optical zoom on a regular video camera), and cyberware recorders perform the same function. But just sometimes it might help to have some optical pics.