Cameras are an essential gameplay mechanic in both Five Nights at Candy's and Five Nights at Candy's 2. They are used to view rooms the player is not in to locate animatronics and track their progress towards the player. For several reasons in both games, not using the cameras is guaranteed to cause the player to lose past Night 2 of the first game and on every night of the second game.
Cameras in Five Nights at Candy's are very low-powered, unable to view anything but a black screen on their normal setting. To compensate, they are equipped with a setting called Night Vision, which illuminates the camera's view to almost full visibility. It can be toggled on for all cameras at once by clicking on the active camera, but deactivates every time the camera panel is put down.
The only thing visible on cameras without Night Vision enabled is the glowing white pinprick eyes of the animatronics Candy the Cat, Cindy the Cat, Chester the Chimpanzee, and The Penguin when they are actively moving and thus a threat. As such, viewing cameras while skipping on using Night Vision is a valid strategy for the first several nights while these are the only animatronics active, but this is not suggested once the eye-less Old Candy and others begin activating.
See Cam 011, Cam 012, Cam 013, Cam 014, Cam 015, and Cam 016
There are six cameras located around Rowboatics Corp. Factory in Five Nights at Candy's 2, each in a different peripheral room. The Camera Panel is used to view the camera feeds as well as to ring the phones in each room, which is required to deter most of the animatronics; one need not be viewing a room's camera to activate that room's phone.
The cameras are also essential for completing every night after Night 1, as they are the only way to locate Withered Chester or Withered Cat when they try to break into the vents.
The animatronics Withered Penguin and Withered Rat sometimes appear with their faces completely obscuring the camera's view. The player must immediately click away or the camera system will crash, forcing them to wait several seconds while it restarts.