Skip to main content

Spectral Camera

Wondrous Item, Uncommon (cost 500 gp)
Crafting Components

A glass lens tempered on the Ethereal Plane

Favored by those who deal with hauntings, a spectral camera can capture the image of spirits on film. Any creature with incorporeal movement or on the Ethereal Plane (visible or not) that passes in front of the camera’s open aperture (up to 30 feet away) will trigger the camera to immediately take a monochrome picture. This has no effect on creatures affected by an invisibility spell. You can also take a picture manually as a reaction. Once a picture is taken, you must spend an action to prepare the camera for another.

Unlike physical objects, incorporeal beings do not need to stay still to appear on the resulting photo, though the entire process takes 1 minute to complete. Such photos do not need to be developed and show ghostly subjects in crisp detail, while all mundane aspects (chairs, corporeal creatures, etc.) are at best mildly blurry.

Each picture taken with a spectral camera costs 2 gp in materials, which are significantly rarer than those for a mundane photograph. (300 gp, 15 lbs.)