1. A system comprising: a monitoring device including a sensor monitoring an ambient region, an illumination system, and an image capturing device, wherein, responsive to the sensor detecting an alarm condition in the ambient region, the image capturing device is activated for capturing an image of the ambient region to determine whether the image is consistent with the alarm condition, and wherein, after activation of the image capturing device, the illumination system is automatically activated to illuminate the ambient region when the image capturing device detects that the ambient region is smoke-occluded.