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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Ouch: EPIC fried By laser at concert...

That is a fluke, imagine what that laser would do to the human eye!

Something similar happened to my digibeta camera years ago and I performed a black balance and the camera was fine. I suspect a black shading should fix an epic,

i do have 2 epics and I have shot around disco lasers, and I haven't had this happen yet. Thank god!
 
This makes me angry. I don't even allow ACs to point laser measures toward camera, let alone point the bloody camera at an industrial powered laser.
 
I rent my cameras and had some strange artifacts in the images after a rental - cost was 8500$ for new sensor + labor, according to RED apparently laser damage... so be careful!

From the looks of what happens in that video, it seems like there is a bug in the firmware that kicks in when the laser hits - could be to protect the sensor even, I dunno. But to see if there was a real lasting damage, the camera would have to be reset (firmware reinstalled, new blackshade) and some images had to be captured and viewed closely at 100% magnification. (From what I saw in the video it is impossible to conclude that the sensor recieved permanent damage - but something clearly happened.)
 
That stinks... you can filter lasers if you plan ahead. One of my guys totaled a FLIR sensor (almost $20k to repair) working around a laser unprotected... learned his lesson.
 
Reminds me of my Red One original M sensor camera. Completely fried on TVC shoot. That was years ago. But MX sensor upgrade came up and replace it with MX. We never had that problem since then

Rivai
 
I still think this is the cam op's fault for not discussing it/being aware of where the lasers would be shooting beforehand. ALWAYS talk with the lighting designers before a show and try to watch a test run if you can - they already make sure that lasers aren't shooting at people's eyes, lest they be sued.

We definitely know that it will cost $9,500+ to get a Dragon sensor replaced :/ Hope you have good insurance!
 
If they do this kind of instant, permanent, damage to sensors then what do they do to people?

Aren't these things dangerous if you are in the crowd?

and what about these brainiacs who point them at cockpits?

whats the whole love of laser shows anyway?


perhaps I am aging, but none of this stuff seems smart to me.
 
Ivan Kovax said:
How does one filter a laser?
Click to expand...
Depends on the output wavelength of the laser... visible light lasers would need a filter attenuating that wavelength (some invisible lasers like CO2 can be filtered easily... polycarbonate IIRC will take out CO2). We generally don't worry about a bit of color shift in our video... but for media work you may be able to get a high quality (sharp) notch filter to just cut the wavelength around the laser output frequency - it would still affect color but maybe not so much that it caused you problems. I wouldn't be surprised to find there are a couple folks out there making them... though worst case you could pay through the nose and have one fabricated. Edit: You filter the camera not the laser - :)
 
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David Battistella said:
If they do this kind of instant, permanent, damage to sensors then what do they do to people?

Aren't these things dangerous if you are in the crowd?

and what about these brainiacs who point them at cockpits?

whats the whole love of laser shows anyway?


perhaps I am aging, but none of this stuff seems smart to me.
Click to expand...
There are different laser 'classes' that rate the danger of laser output to humans, (Class 1 and 2 are generally harmless, 3a are a bit more dangerous but can generally be used without guarding, 3b and 4 can cause eye or other damage to the body and need to be enclosed/interlocked to protect people from exposure. Ratings are 'loosely' power related but there's also a wavelength component - certain wavelengths are more dangerous because of how they penetrate the body. Visible light lasers get to the back of they eye and can damage rods and cones even with relatively low power levels. I'd guess the performance lasers are Class 3b but since they've got optics that move the laser around they can rely on that to keep exposure under a dangerous threshold. Damage is caused by power density over time... they want power to make the beam visible so they have to keep the time down to insure safety (move the laser around quickly so it never stays in a single location for more than a few milliseconds). Beam size is also important... the eye has a small aperture, so a beam that's wide won't deliver all it's power to the retina. In the case of the IP video the laser was in motion and it also looked like they had optics on the laser that caused the beam to diverge, so they got a nice tight visible beam close to the stage but a wider beam by the time it got to the crowd. We'd perceive it as a bright yellow spot that would make us blink. The camera however probably had a big long lens collecting a lot of light... so it collected up the wide beam and focused it back down - increasing the energy to a level high enough to damage the sensor.
 
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