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Roman Abramovich's Eclipse has anti-photo 'laser shield'

edesignuk

edesignuk

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Mar 25, 2002
19,232
2
London, England
22sep09_eclipse43.jpg


If you ask a young boy to spec out his ideal boat, you might hear of helipads, swimming pools, missile-proof hulls, mini-submarines and laser shields. Well, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich is one of those people with the time and money to listen to his inner child, and he's gone and put all of the above together inside a $1.2 billion 557-foot vessel of luxury and excess. The Eclipse will attempt to repel paparazzi with a laser system that is said to "detect CCDs" (we suspect they mean it detects the autofocus light), and responds with an intense beam of light that precludes unwanted photography. We don't know how well the automatic system will work, but it must be fun to manually point the lasers at the paps and go "pew pew!"
Click to expand...
Engadget.

That's pretty cool, in an entirely I have far too much money kind of way :eek:
 
If its detecting the autofocus signal, one easy way to get around this is to put your camera on manual focus (most dslrs allow this)
 
Intense beam, eh? More light, in other words -- which will certainly help the paparazzi if it's dark enough they're needing the autofocus assist light in the first place. :D

I'm not sure why they aren't also using the sonic stuff that's had a few uses in the pirate-infested waters off Somalia in the last year or two. In this case, it could encourage the paparazzi to discontinue their pursuit if subjected to painful ear-splitting directed noise.

Why don't they just employ a huge dome with a reflective mirror coating or use a polarized filter coating? They certainly seem to have the money for that stuff. :rolleyes:
 
Manual focus and no flash with a long lens, gives out nothing that could be 'detected'. Furthermore, there is scope for such a system to cause injury - ESPECIALLY if a laser hits a lens which someone is looking through. Not sure I entire bye the story as being either feasible or legal.
 
meh.
stratosferic costs for a system that would not work (by design) on the vast majority of SRLs, associated to major liability issues.
If the system even exists, and i have some doubts, Abra has been ripped off bigtime.

but i am sure he will compensate with the missile defence system :D
 
Who cares about his $1.2billion yacht.

It is his dastardly plans for an ultra-secret "invisible-from-earth" $35billion space station we should be talking about. ;)

moonraker_s_12_500.jpg
 
That's just stupid. I'd never heard of him before. It's not like he's some huge celebrity with a list of angry stalkers...
 
stridemat said:
Imagine having $1.2 billion to spend on something. I can dream...
Click to expand...

Yeah, no kidding. Private yachts of this size are pretty much the pinnacle of wealth. It puts even the Gulfstream owners to shame - at least someone can justify the utility of a G550. This thing is essentially a $1.2B floating penis. :p
 
Detects the auto-focus light? I thought they stopped using infrared or "beams" to focus on anything. Cameras now us contrast to focus.
 
They say the system detects CCD's. Any DSLR that has an autofocus system (pretty much all of them) uses a CCD in the autofocus sensor.

If it only detects the CCD sensor that actually captures the image, every DSLR will defeat this system easily. The sensor isn't exposed until the shutter is pressed (no "live view" shooting allowed;)). Heck, film cameras would fair even better.:D

If such is the case, it's time to whip out the old bellows camera (much higher resolution than those puny digital cameras);).
 
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