Systems and methods described herein are directed to capturing intrinsic color images of subjects. A camera may be equipped with a light source that is coaxial to the camera's image sensor and configured to emit a pulse of light of short duration. During image capture of a subject, the camera light source may emit the pulse of light through the lens barrel of the camera and stop emission of light before the reflected light from the light source returns. Thereafter, the camera lens receives the reflected light from the light source (with the light source no longer emitting light) and charge is collected at one or more image sensor photodetector sites of the camera.