A lipstick camera is an extremely small video camera which is approximately the size of a typical tube of lipstick. They are useful for capturing images that a conventional camera would not be able to capture due to size or weight constraints.
Examples include showing a poker player's hand, looking inside a hockey penalty box, or providing a "point of view" angle by mounting the camera on a helmet. The camera itself only has just enough electronics to capture the image, typically on a 6mm (1/4 in) Bayer filter CCD. It is connected by a cable to a somewhat larger box where the image is processed into a standard video signal which can be recorded.
The camera suggested the Mike Bonifer thriller film, Lipstick Camera (1994), about a woman who hopes to get into TV news, borrows a friend's camera and obtains incriminating pictures sought by two former East German spies.