I was thinking along the lines of some type of device that would cause their film to fog or become unusable. Something that might emit heat or some sort of energy enough to cause film to be ruined while still in the camera. On the other hand, if most are using digital cameras, is there any way to disrupt the image? I think shining a powerful laser into their viewfinders to blind them would be cruel, but would that even work?
So, here’s my question: Say, I were being hounded by paparrazi and all I wanted to do was maintain a 50-foot perimeter around myself where they could not get into without suffering damage to their equipment. Is there a technical way to do that?
If it was dark enough, you could carry around a slave flash – a device designed to trigger a strobe when it senses a camera’s flash. Aimed right, this would spoil a photo. However, you’d look pretty weird carrying one around as a fashion accessory.
I’m almost certain that pretty much all paparazzi these days are shooting digital. I’m not in that line of work myself, but I can’t see any good reason why one would shoot film. That said, if you want to destroy the data, you’d need to irradiate the CF card with something that would damage it. Gamma radiation levels of 55 kGy will damage cards (Cite/). I guess finding a device that could target that kind of radiation would be one way to ruin a paparazzo.
The slave flash idea is very nifty, but would only work if the paparazzi are using flash themselves (of course.)
Czarcasm, my question here was actually the result of a thought experiment I imagined after posting in the thread about Britney shaving her head. I was wondering what type of life would it be if you developed a friendship with someone like her and wanted to maintain a regular friendship. You could invite them over to hang out, watch tv or play cards, but you’d probably always have to deal with the paparrazi when out in public with your celebrity friend. That would get annoying, so hence my question…I wasn’t thinking I was actually going to become rich and famous.
Real answer? You really couldn’t avoid them. If your friend was rich and/or famous, the paparazzi will follow, so to visit you your friend would have to find some way to divert their attention, put on a good disguise, find some way to sneak past the cameras to where you live, sneak back(still in disguise) and find some way to reenter the house without causing suspicion. Now, this isn’t impossible, but you have to ask yourself this question: Would a true friend ask someone to go through all that just for a visit, or would a true friend put up with the paparazzi?
ahem 55 kGy will not only ruin his card, it would permanently ruin him and anyone standing closeby. (Lethal dose 10-50 Gy). It would be a cure of sorts for those pesky paparazzi
I read a while ago that Russell Crowe avoids the worst of the attention by wearing the same shirts all the time so that editors can’t tell whether photos they are offered are recent.
I have seen experimental devices that were allegedly able to detect a camera lens by its appearance (specular properties, etc) and aimed a low power diode laser at them, not causing any damage, but preventing the camera from capturing a usable image.
CRAP!!! I was just coming in here to post this link. I know Jay Summet (my wife is a recent GATech Ph.D. in Computing), and when she was doing her defense last month, Jay was telling her about this.
You can’t see me, Mangetout, but I’m shaking my fist at you.
I was sure I’d seen a different technology that just recognised the specularity of the lens coatings, but even that could be defeated quite easily. metaphysical bodily radiance that only shows up on cameras; that’s my fallback.
Back to my original thought experiment.
I was thinking along the lines that a normal, average person (me) could somehow be friends with some sort of needy, unstable celebrity (Britney). Now, maybe they would just need someone to talk to who wouldn’t go blabbing to the media every time, maybe they just needed a place to go have wholesome fun and hang out without getting trashed. Anyway… my thought experiment took it to going to the zoo. What if two friends just wanted to go to the zoo? I suppose that the paparazzi would be following us (well, her) around. So, my conditions weren’t that there could be NO paparazzi, I just wanted to minimize their interference. If someone wanted to use a telephoto lens from 100 yards away, fine. I just didn’t want to have to wade through them to see the white alligators. So, the solution in my mind would be to make it useless for a photographer to get within a perimeter of me and my celebrity friend. So, the object is not to get rid of the paparazzi, but make it so a celebrity could get around. Does that make more sense?
