In message , Chris Malcolm
writes
Glen Talberts wrote:
On Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:40:48 +0100, "JamieM" wrote:

LOL, didn't realise it was April fools day yet.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/22/r...s-eclipse-has-
anti-photo-laser-shield/

"If you ask a young boy to spec out his ideal boat, you might hear of
helipads, swimming pools, missile-proof hulls, mini-submarines and laser
shields. Well, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is one of those people
with the time and money to listen to his inner child, and he's gone and put
all of the above together inside a $1.2 billion 557-foot vessel of luxury
and excess. The Eclipse will attempt to repel paparazzi with a laser system
that is said to "detect CCDs" (we suspect they mean it detects the autofocus
light), and responds with an intense beam of light that precludes unwanted
photography. We don't know how well the automatic system will work, but it
must be fun to manually point the lasers at the paps and go "pew pew!"

A much simpler, much more inexpensive, and more effective concept was a
baseball cap with 3 or 4 small slave-triggered flash-units in it. Whenever
paparazzi would fire a flash at the intended celebrity the flash's would
instantly fire back ruining all their shots. This was of course most
effective at night, but then that's when their cameras are the most
annoying.

So anyone using pre-flash metering would be able to photograph the
celebrity, since the pre-flash would fire the cap guns leaving them
empty for the proper flash.

You clearly haven't seen the size of the power plant on that ship.....
recycle times of 0.05 second?

And anyone not using pre-flash would
simply need to trigger any old flash just before the real photograph.
Not really much of an obstacle. I suspect this device was far more
giggled over than ever actually used.

SO you will risk your camera on it then?

However I think you are right. More hype than substance especially as
you would be able to claim for criminal damage? Also if the mirror is
down any lazer that will harm a ccd will harm an eyeball....

--
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