oops... (was Re: Nology)

[Tom Parker]

Bill the arcstarter <arcstarter at hotmail.com> wrote:

[killing speed camera photos]

>Oh - that sounds nice.  I had thought about a constant IR lamp blaring
>on the plate to fog the film.  Possibly via infrared leds/diode
>modules...  Most b/w film is sensitive to IR or so I'm told...

This might work, but I would think you would need a rather powerful source.
In order to completely burn out the film  you need a huge amount of light, I
have got usable images from film overexposed by 3 or 4 stops.

I imagine a flash aimed at the number plate would be most effective. If the
flash is pointing at the camera, and is near the plate, you might have some
luck, but the camera will be doing its best to keep the light from the flash
in the area of the film where the flash is, not where the plate is. You would
only get light that is scattered inside the camera going from the flash to the
image of the number plate.

At least, this is how I see it.

The other problem with slave flash units is that they are very sensitive. If
they see any kind of very fast rising light source, they go off.
Photographers have problems with slaves triggering off strobes in shop windows
far away from where they are photographing...

The local police claimed that the idea would not work. They didn't give any
convincing reasons for it. They went on about how fast the shutter is, but the
flash is much much faster...

--
Tom Parker - tparker at nznet.gen.nz
           - http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/Track/8381/