Welcome to Laser Pointer Forums - discuss green laser pointers, blue laser pointers, and all types of lasers

Buy Site Supporter Role (remove some ads) | LPF Donations

Links below open in new window

FrozenGate by Avery

Concert Laser kills dSLR sensor

drumz0rz

drumz0rz

0
Joined
Jul 13, 2010
Messages
33
Points
8
Check this out. A guy was filming a concert with a dSLR when the scanning laser directly hit the camera's sensative sensor frying a part of the chip. Make sure this doesn't happen to you! I wonder how many mW that laser is pumping out.

Laser Light Show Burns a DSLR Sensor
 





It does not take much power to kill the sensors in cameras, at least with a laser.
i broke a web cam with only 180mw of 405,
Granted its a much lower quality.
Also makes you wonder if the lasers power was enough to blow the camera out partway that it must not be within safe specs for scanning, at least in the us.
There are normally to be lots of calculations for the power levels of these projectors but most likely these are just setup and no one cared to check.
 
Ouch, that hurts. :(

The main laser you're seeing is probably multiwatt - it may or may not have been legal, dependent on many factors.

-Trevor
 
Wow that sucks

Interesting how it left a white bar, the burns i have seen always tend to leave a black spot, not a lighter line
 
I have a crap digital camera that I sometimes use, but it has laser burns from various reflected beams. Haha but they are also black spots. Not bars.
 
Could be the difference between low quality camera sensors and one worth possibly more than 10 x that. The line vs black spot difference I mean.
 
DSLR w/ video have CMOS sensors and employ a tactic called "rolling shutter" to expose the sensor. This means each horizontal line of photosites is exposed individually during the exposure (from top to bottom). I suspect the burn spots are on CCD based cameras using a global shutter (all photosites exposed at the same time).
 
ugh. This is why professionals generally have camera insurance. I'd hate to be a 'hobbyist' photographer and have my 5dMkII burned out this way.
 
jib77 said:
DSLR w/ video have CMOS sensors and employ a tactic called "rolling shutter" to expose the sensor. This means each horizontal line of photosites is exposed individually during the exposure (from top to bottom). I suspect the burn spots are on CCD based cameras using a global shutter (all photosites exposed at the same time).
Click to expand...

That would have been my second guess, CMOS vs. CCD
 
both my Canon 1D (CCD) and Canon 1D II (CMOS) have been exposed to/scaned with many watts of light and I have never had an issue
 
I can't believe they were doing those crowd scans at all. That laser beam definitely seemed capable of causing eye damage.
 
Is it possible that the reason for this is damage to the edge of the sensor (end of the row) rather than the sensor surface itself? That would potentially explain why it's white and not black (black=too much absorbed light so the point is forever low voltage, white because the row has been cut and the wire is "floating"?), and only affects one line even after multiple scans. Perhaps the thin wire (if such thing exists) at the edge of the sensor, responsible for reading the row, was weaker than the rest and so was damaged, but the stronger, non-defective wires were unaffected by the light?

If that was the case then I suspect the camera owners could contest that the unit had a defect which caused the fault, and therefore the manufacturer is responsible for repairs...
 
Last edited:
I work in the business and the lasers they use generally in "Professional" shows are dangerous and are also Run, setup, and kept after by state licensed Pro's. If the crowd is being scanned at eye level, then those are NOT pro's. Seems the laws in Europe for these shows are a lot more laxed....I love seeing lasers at shows, makes for a great addition to the music, but they should alway be run by someone who has a clue.
Too bad about that 5D, damm nice camera...seen them used in Television shoots here and there even.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top