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Russian Billionaire Installs Anti-Photo Shield on Giant Yacht
- yangyang 17y agoThis sounds like complete nonsense: "Lasers sweep the surroundings and when they detect a CCD, they fire a bolt of light right at the camera to obliterate any photograph"
- DarrenMills 17y agoIs a CCD, at several hundred feet, something you can detect? Using what technology?
- yangyang 17y agoExactly. And what of cameras that use CMOS sensors (like most DSLRs)? Or old-school film-shooting paps?
- pbz 17y agoSharks with lasers of course...
- anigbrowl 17y agoNot the CCD. Handheld detectors (like this one http://www.lightinthebox.com/Super-Sleuth-Camera-Detector_p50144.html http://www.lightinthebox.com/Super-Sleuth-Camera-Detector_p5...) work by strobing an array of very bright LEDs and looking for reflections from lenses. I've seen manufacturers claim it's good out to 900 feet and I see no reason it wouldn't work in principle, but a shrewd paparazzi could probably just set up a few ordinary mirrors around his observation point and confuse the system that way. Sounds like a repurposed military anti-sniper device or similar. Then again maybe the whole thing is just exaggeration designed to give paparazzi nightmares about having their retinas burned.
- mseebach 17y agoEspecially since the CCD is only exposed for a fraction of a second while the shutter is open and the image is captured. It'll have to be scanning at a crazy fast rate (35 mm square at 200 meters, 30+ times a second?) .. and good luck getting the light cannon pointed in the right direction and fired before the shutter closes. What I reasoned when I read this, was that the system would detect whatever it is the auto-focus emits, and point a laser/sharp light in that specific direction, obscuring any further pictures, and at least forcing the photographer to move. Of course, it's ridiculous easy to hit with a denial of service attack, and even easier to circumvent -- just don't use auto-focus, which isn't needed at distance anyway.
- notaddicted 17y agoThe laser is the light cannon.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- yangyang 17y agoAuto-focus on most cameras (those that use phase / contrast detecton AF, at least) doesn't emit anything, unless you mean emissions from the circuitry used to control it. Some cameras have a AF assist light for helping the AF in low light, but that won't come on in daylight. You do need to focus at distance with long, fast lenses.
- jrg 17y agoAt a distance you'd stop-down the lens aperture, stick it in manual focus, and set it to somewhere around infinity. (and big, fancy yachts are always moored somewhere sunny, off the coast. So no problem there.)
- yangyang 17y agoDepends how long a lens you're using. You'd need a pretty fast shutter speed at 600mm+.
- vaksel 17y agocan't the paparazzi just switch to video?
- philwelch 17y agoVideo cameras use CCD's as well.
- raquo 17y agoI bet he also has a small army onboard.
- cellis 17y agoSafe bet, as IIRC he had missiles installed.
- mingdingo 17y agoCould you counteract this by taking a photograph from behind a one way mirror? You could still get photos, but the raft's light would be reflected back. Or so I presume... EDIT: Two way mirror is the technically correct term.
- abentspoon 17y agoNo. A CCD only records the light that comes from the boat, the same way film and your eyes operate.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- yangyang 17y agoOriginal Times article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6841380.ece http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article68...
- chaosmachine 17y agoThis same technology was supposed to be installed in movie theaters to stop people from filming the screen. I don't think it ever happened, though.
- die_sekte 17y agoMan, I should get into the business of selling useless things to billionaires.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- philwelch 17y agoIt might be lucrative for the first sale or two, but someone like Abramovich sees firing people who disappoint him as a hobby (if you can judge from what's happened to the last several managers of Chelsea).
- EinhornIsFinkle 17y agoInsiders call that business money laundering ;)
- die_sekte 17y agoNo. Money laundering is useful. (And it's illegal. I want to sell useless legal things.)
- prat 17y ago>"intermeddling with goods belonging to someone else, or altering their condition, is a trespass to goods and will entitle the photographer to claim compensation without having to prove loss." The goods belonging to someone else (paparazzi) ARE photographs with a bolt of light. How can a photographer's photo be altered with a bolt of light if it was created with a bolt of light in it in the first place.
- ErrantX 17y agoThat sounds like years of litigation nightmare waiting to happen.
- Mankhool 17y agoI believe that the system is actually detecting the lasers that the cameras use for range-finding, and then using a laser to blind the sensor.
- old-gregg 17y agoAll cameras I've ever owned used purely passive, optical autofocus with rarely activated IR assist off the flash unit, which only fires when it gets really dark and works only for distances under 10-15 feet. From the article it's completely unclear to me how could that possibly work: those "lasers" would have to scan every square inch of the landscape (possibly a couple square miles) at the rate of about 100-1000 times per second in order to blind an SLR camera during the day. Any experts here?
- pkulak 17y agoYou're exactly right (though I'm no expert). SLRs use contrast detection focusing. I have no idea how you could detect a CCD at any point in space all around you for the tiny fraction (1/1000 wouldn't be uncommon outdoors on a sunny day) of a second that it's exposed, _and_ react to it in that same time span. Sounds to me like someone just scammed a rich idiot out of a bunch of money.
- yangyang 17y agoSLRs use phase-detect actually, using separate AF sensors. Contrast-detect is used in compact cameras (non-SLRs) and optionally in live-view mode on some DSLRs.
- machrider 17y agoAgreed, this description makes no sense. If you're talking about a point & shoot camera, or any camera with a live preview where the CCD is continually exposed, then it might work. But a plain old SLR is going to expose its CCD for maybe 1/1000 of a second on a sunny day. I have seen a system like this that worked by detecting flash photography, and firing a flash back at the source of the original flash. If you react quickly enough to a flash, you can blind the CCD while it's still exposed, ruining the image. Can't find the link right now. But if you don't use a flash, then that system doesn't work.
- papersmith 17y agoI'm curious as to how a second-hand private yacht ($1,200 mil) can be worth more than the build cost of the largest cruise ship in the world ($700 mil). Don't watercrafts depreciate like crazy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Queen_Mary_2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Queen_Mary_2
- callmeed 17y agoDust off the film camera. Take that, Roman.