Required wattage?

Hi! I am planning to buy a laser pointer. I want to use it to destroy camera lens on mobile phones, about 5 mpix camera.

Anyone have experience what wattage reqired to destroy mobile phone's camera lens or make it not functional?

Appreciate for the help and information

Sorry, but is that just trolling attempt or is there any rational reason why to destroy some camera?

it's just for my own experiments

bz8687 said:

it's just for my own experiments

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On your own phone, or when someone is trying to video you?:undecided:

bz8687 said:

Hi! I am planning to buy a laser pointer. I want to use it to destroy camera lens on mobile phones, about 5 mpix camera.

Anyone have experience what wattage reqired to destroy mobile phone's camera lens or make it not functional?

Appreciate for the help and information

Click to expand...

Anyone have experience what wattage reqired to destroy mobile phone's camera lens or make it not functional?

Appreciate for the help and information [/QUOTE]

Not a bright idea.
Use a piece of black electrical tape to cover the lens or take a knife or screwdriver or a piece of sandpaper and scratchup/cloud/ruin the lens if you have to for reasonsunknown--either is a smarter way and more easily done than with a laser.

Radim said:

Sorry, but is that just trolling attempt or is there any rational reason why to destroy some camera?

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exactly

Thanks for reply guys!

Planning to buy a pointer, but not sure what wattage (0.5-2W?) needed to make the lens unfunctional without any visible damages on devices.

Thanks in advance!

I'd stay away from 405 nm or IR lasers to do that, there is probably a filter to attenuate those wavelengths.

bz8687 said:

Thanks for reply guys!

Planning to buy a pointer, but not sure what wattage (0.5-2W?) needed to make the lens unfunctional without any visible damages on devices.

Thanks in advance!

Click to expand...

Better to use black tape for that, or dismount the camera or sensor from the device or use sand paper, as mentioned above. The best solution IMO.

These lasers are dangerous enough to damage your (or anybody elses) eyes when used without proper eye protection. And what's more - you will spend much more money on such a solution. You do not really need laser to just disable it.

Finally you will hardly damage lens as they are designed to pass the light, more likely you will damage the sensor, to be accurate. But even if you do it it might not be completely destroyed and not speaking this si highly dangerous stuff to do without proper laser safety experience.

Hi might want to kill his camera as a warranty issue for some reason or another

I hope this is just a trolling attempt, as I'm with GSS on this one. I get the feeling that he will point it at other peoples cameras rather than his own.
Either way:

I agree with Oliver. Seems to me as a real reason of OP as well. Oliver, I wanted to rep you not only because of this post, but still the spreading limit. I really need to find posts I like from people not repped recently.

For OP - for remote camera destroy - it is not only illegal, but highly ineffective way, as it is hard to get sufficient exposure to destroy sensor completely. In real situation you hardly point to small lens of camera with enough energy density for enough time and the camera sensor will be damaged only in a few pixels if any damage will occur, but still working. And you might to go to prison or end with injury from the punch. Just in case. Do not do it and if someone is disturbing your privacy film them and report to police. No other advice could be given if this case apply.

Thanks again Radim.
It would help if we knew a little bit more about your intentions OP, as you are being a bit vague by saying

bz8687 said:

it's just for my own experiments

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And what do you mean by

bz8687 said:

make the lens unfunctional without any visible damages on devices.

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????

Heh, I still smell that salmon here too. Could be he wants to kill a camera in is phone because something else is wrong with it a warranty doesn't cover, or, he wants to shoot out a security camera, or he is paranoid someone would hack into his phone and might see him, or, his phone is not allowed in a secure area unless the camera is permanently disable, I've seen that one.... or, a lot of reasons but I see a big fat salmon. Lately, a guy has been riding the edge on his posts, just enough to appear trollish, but not over the edge, all of us have been happy to leave him alone and let him troll, then he had to go nuts today and start using swear words and being more obvious, he couldn't take the pressure of not ruffling anyones feathers, so that's why I'm smelling salmon in the forum now, possibly from sincere posters such as this man, I don't know...

However, if I were to want to kill a camera with a laser, I'd first try it with a fairly low power 532nm laser pointer, one of those cheap 10 dollar ones from China and see if it has enough power to do so, if not... get a more powerful one and try it, but might damage the plastic inside the lens before he kills the sensor, and only a few pixels at a time, as suggested above. I don't know, but I have seen photographs of a few dead pixels in the last which were caused by a laser pointer, so not sure how easy it will be to kill a camera sensor without leaving evidence.

I too was thinking about CCTV cameras being a possible option. I still think troll, but I would hesitate giving out any suggestions/ideas to him as LPF does not want to be involved with anything criminal.

Well, it is hard to speculate. If OP will not post more description of for what experiment he needs it, it is hard to give any advice by assumption. Just in general: Stay safe and do not attept to do anything illegal or potentially dangerous. And yes even laser pointer (under 5 mW), might cause damage - depends on the other conditions. There were even reported camera damages from lasershows, where it was eye safe, but not camera safe - cameras might have more sensitive treshold for damage, no blink reflex or fast tiny movements, focus on finer point and even the objective lens is bigger than eye pupil (migt not be case of mobile phone camera).

Killing a CCTV camera is going to be a lot harder because of divergence, if at much distance, the power density might be too low due to spreading. I wouldn't think a laser would reliably kill a camera in a phone or anything without a lot of testing, probably a lot of repetitive shots too. Not a random way to kill a camera unless you pump so much power into the sensor it burns it which under a magnifying glass could be discovered.

Edit: I wonder, could it be possible to find more information inside the forum on this, if searching....

http://laserpointerforums.com/f44/wattage-required-destroy-cctv-camera-29752-3.html

I was going to say, a SSY-1 YAG would do a job on a camera, even at a distance, vaporise the chip, but Hemlock Mike commented about doing just that in the above thread.