Russian Billionaire Installs Anti-Photo Shield on Giant Yacht

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/russian-billionaire-installs-anti-photo-shield-on-giant-yacht/

by ashishk • 17 years ago

25 36 17 years ago

yangyang6• 17 years ago

This 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• 17 years ago

Is a CCD, at several hundred feet, something you can detect? Using what technology?

yangyang6• 17 years ago

Exactly. And what of cameras that use CMOS sensors (like most DSLRs)?

Or old-school film-shooting paps?

pbz• 17 years ago

Sharks with lasers of course...

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

Not the CCD. Handheld detectors (like this one 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• 17 years ago

Especially 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• 17 years ago

The laser is the light cannon.

yangyang6• 17 years ago

Auto-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.

vaksel• 17 years ago

can't the paparazzi just switch to video?

philwelch2• 17 years ago

Video cameras use CCD's as well.

raquo• 17 years ago

I bet he also has a small army onboard.

cellis2• 17 years ago

Safe bet, as IIRC he had missiles installed.

mingdingo• 17 years ago

Could 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• 17 years ago

No. A CCD only records the light that comes from the boat, the same way film and your eyes operate.

yangyang6• 17 years ago

Original Times article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article68...

chaosmachine• 17 years ago

This 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_sekte2• 17 years ago

Man, I should get into the business of selling useless things to billionaires.

philwelch2• 17 years ago

It 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• 17 years ago

Insiders call that business money laundering ;)

die_sekte2• 17 years ago

No. Money laundering is useful. (And it's illegal. I want to sell useless legal things.)

prat• 17 years 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• 17 years ago

That sounds like years of litigation nightmare waiting to happen.

Mankhool• 17 years ago

I 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• 17 years ago

All 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• 17 years ago

You'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.

machrider• 17 years ago

Agreed, 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.

cellis2• 17 years ago

No expert, but is it possible that this technology could be coupled with cameras using an object recognition algorithm? Once it had narrowed the space, it could then scan.

tomsaffell• 17 years ago

IANAN. The sensor detection sounds pretty unlikely. But what about some other possible methods:

The end of an SLR lens is domed/convex, and slightly reflective (even the best ones are slightly). The lens would have to be pointed at the ship for the system to care about it. In that state, shining a laser at the lens and detecting the reflection would pick up the reflection profile of the convex surface (you'd need a 2d array of sensors to pick up the range of return angles as the laser moves from the center of the lens), and finding the center would be fairly easy - so you'd know where to fire. How many other reflective convex surfaces have their axis of rotation pointed straight at the boat?

I imagine this is mostly a problem when in dock, or at anchor, where the paparazzi are probably all in one location (or a few), so the search space could be very quickly narrowed down by a human.

Seems like a pretty frivolous way to spend money, but at least it's being spent.

bd• 17 years ago

Yes, that seems to be the case for military use:

"The JD-3 laser dazzler is mounted on the Chinese Type 98 main battle tank. It is coupled with a laser radiation detector, and automatically aims for the enemy's illuminating laser designator, attempting to overwhelm its optical systems or blind the operator. The ZM-87 Portable Laser Disturber is a Chinese electro-optic countermeasure laser device. It can blind enemy troops at up to 2 to 3 km range and temporarily blind them at up to 10 km range."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzler_%28weapon%29

Though there was also a bizarre spy incident with Russian "merchant" ship blinding US & Canadian helicopter-surveillance operators where it's not clear if they used laser range-finding:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strait_of_Juan_de_Fuca_laser_in...

papersmith• 17 years ago

I'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

callmeed• 17 years ago

Dust off the film camera. Take that, Roman.

Russian Billionaire Installs Anti-Photo Shield on Giant Yacht

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