# Talk:Expensive camera
So this is pretty much just a wand of make blind?

An expensive camera, flashed at a monster, will make monsters flee from you. This effect is different from, say, a thrown potion of blindness, which makes monsters blind but does not make them flee from you. The fleeing effect is ridiculously useful against really tough monsters such as the Riders, because there's no other item in the game that can make them flee. Another point worth noting is that a camera can be recharged infinitely many times, whereas a wand can only be charged at most 7 times ... most players don't care about this, but for Tourists with the PYEC, that's a big difference (and isn't it convenient that Tourists start with an expensive camera? hmmm...) Finally, the camera has a few weird properties that wands don't have, for example the fact that it deals no damage when wielded as a weapon ... which is something that only pacifists would care about, but there you have it. Djao 05:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
"I don't think the 'X' would like that very much"
I just tried to apply a camera @ a jackal and got the message that @ 1 member of the dev team did not think that the jackal 
would like that very much.  I think I've seen this message a few times previously, as well.  What' the deal w/ that?  There 
should be something about that pheonominon in hte article.  It seems to be random, but 1ce decidex apon continues to be true 
for the particular instance of a particular monster (trying again next turn gets the exact same result). — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slarty (talk • contribs) 

The only place I am seeing that message is when you try to 'lock' a monster. That produces the message I don't think 

<monster> would appreciate that.. Perhaps you're simply hitting the wrong letter? -- Qazmlpok 03:02, June 16, 2010 (UTC)
Sorry if this wastes bandwidth (or whatever), but that may very well be correct.67.42.216.230 00:06, June 17, 2010 (UTC)SlartySlarty 00:07, June 17, 2010 (UTC)

Blinding monster
I think the monster would be permanently blinded if adjacent and up to 50 turns, decreasing with distance, if not adjacent.  The bitfield mcansee tracks the current status and mblinded is the counter for temporary blindness; they are defined in monst.h, line 93.  The blinding in done in the flash_hits_mon routine (uhitm.c, line 2504).  If you are adjacent mblinded is set to 0, otherwise it is set to rnd(1 + 50/tmp) where tmp is approximately distance squared from a call to dist2.  The problem timeout is done is mcalcdistress (mon.c, line 542) where mcansee is only changed to 1 when mblinded changes from 1 to 0.  If mblinded is already 0, nothing is done and the monster stays blinded.  --Skidragon2 (talk) 21:45, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Wizard mode seems to confirm this; I blinded my starting pet at T:2 and when I checked it with a stethoscope on T:112 it was still blind. --Bluescreenofdeath (talk) 10:11, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
3.6.0
Added info on another minor tidbit added in 3.6.0. I might have the probabilities wrong; I threw like 20 cameras and only got 3 picture-demons, but I could have just been really unlucky. Additionally, the strategy section needs to be double checked. I tried using it on Death during my tourist ascension, and it blinded him but did not make him flee. However, I don't see anything in the source code to specifically make them immune to the fleeing. The riders have been buffed in a bunch of other ways so it wouldn't surprise me if they were made immune to the fleeing, but I can't figure out howso. -- Qazmlpok (talk) 17:37, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

</monster>