I was thinking about those outfits celebrities wear that mess with flash photography equipment, and I was watching a dude on TV just now whose shirt pattern was going apeshit because of the camera, and I wondered if there could ever be a pattern or material that, when filmed, caused the camera irreversible damage. And if that were physically possible, I wondered if intentionally showing up to camera-heavy events wearing said shirt would constitute a crime on my part.
It’s just a shirt after all. It’s not like I’m grabbing a camera and smashing it on the ground. But at the same time, I know it will have that effect, so I’m accountable. But it’s not like my shirt is emitting damaging laser beams or anything, it’s entirely passive.
Also, is there anything like this scenario in real life/law?
if you invent some passive way to damage tech by just being in its vicinity. not only would it be illegal. it would be a super weapon.
How they gonna find out? No cameras to witness it
eyes
Eyes aren’t electric…… unless your a bird
you dont neds electric eyes to witness something. i witness stuff all the time and my eyes are analogue.
But if our eyes aren’t eyes, are our eyes eye eyes?
bro’s got the level 9 EMP aura
A weapon to surpass metal gear?
Snake?!
Snaaaaaake!!!
A weapon to defeat metal gear
How better to surpass something than to defeat it?
Instructions unclear: Ran a marathon, got disqualified for defeating the other runners instead of running past them.
Invent?!? Bro, just use infrared LEDs 😂
Not passive. Won’t damage cameras.
Yes not passive but you’re not thinking big enough.
That just brings us back to lasers, though.
No, but you will basically look like a bloomed-out version of this:
This is my thought: unless everyone uses it, they just have to track the one glowing dude. Eventually you’ll be in front of a camera or person who will identify you clearly, and it will be that much easier because you’re glowing.
No
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That was an episode that ended right where it started getting good. Not that the episode was bad before that, but it left me wanting more of that, not a jump to a new premise in the next episode.
The story of this episofe had enough potential for a 6 episode spinoff series. Or maybe 4. Anyway 1 was way too soon.
Is that Doctor Who?
Same actor, but it’s from the latest season of black mirror
To those saying it’s not possible - modern cameras are highly complicated devices, constantly using little motors to change focus and exposure, driven by AI informed algorithms. Leave it up to some nerd to device a pattern and/or material that could maybe drive those sensors and motors nuts, or something like that.
Unless they invent some kind of new force of physics all you can do here is reflect ambient light.
The only pattern/material that comes close to what OP is looking for would be a parabolic mirror. If you attach one of these to your shirts and then stand at the exact right angle and distance to a camera, you could damage it. However that is already stretching “passive” because it would require a lot of deliberate actions to position yourself that way. And it pretty much only works when the sun is out.
A even worse option would be wearing a shirt made from a radioactive material. (but is it still passive when you’re using something radioactive?). And of course this wouldn’t just damage the camera but also very much the cameraman, the wearer and anyone else that is around.
Yes it would be. You’re wearing it with clear intent of damaging equipment.
“I had no idea it would do that. It was a gift/I found it at a thrift store/estate sale/in the trash.”
If you take away the intent, and with no obvious signs that your shirt is anything other than clothing, I don’t know that it would be.
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Looking to get an eicar QR code shirt?
That’s incredible!
This reminds me of a movie or a tv show where people were sneaking into a compound and disabled the security cameras with a laser pointer.
Damaging a camera is very different from something that makes taking a picture impossible. It doesn’t matter if it is passive or active, only the end result is important.
A celebrity might get away with it when just trying to get home but would probably be required to pay for damage to the camera. Anyone at a large venue is going to be ruining everyone’s cameras and that would be a huge deal.
Might not cause damage but there is the Camera Shy Hoodie: https://www.macpierce.com/the-camera-shy-hoodie
Instructions for how to DIY provided, so it doesn’t have to be a hoodie.
Although that really only works as long as the camera doesn’t have an IR filter in place.
If the camera has an IR filter, how would IR be able to make night viewing possible?
It wouldn’t, and I think the other responder, while saying a true fact, may have misunderstood this question’s purpose.
The hoodie will only work with cameras that support IR night vision (most security cameras, no IR filter), but won’t work for most others (phones, dash cams, SLRs (filtered)).
And the dork in me must say, Raspberry Pi offers their Camera Modules in both formats, because noyce.
It works in the opposite. With the IR filter you get a nice colorful image in daytime, but not the IR lights at night
happy cake day
Thanks :)
there was an x-file episode, where the guy emits radiation, which pratically jams cameras, which also gives him xray vision. and also posess the ability regenerate a whole body.
Yeah even if it wasnt ilegal i bet people would find a way to charge you for it or stop you from using it to protect yourself.
Take the simple option of putting on a balaclava and smashing the cameras.
I think it depends on whether it’s active or passive. Active - e.g. a laser that damages a camera sensor, then yes, your device is actively damaging someone else’s camera - deliberate property damage. Passive - e.g. reflective strips so the exposure is bad, a pattern that is hard to focus on or similar- that’s fine - camera owner is making a decision to expose their gear to the environment. Even if, say, it’s a changing pattern that deceives the autofocus into working constantly (no, I don’t know exactly how that would work, but it’s the best I can think of at short notice) so it wears out faster.
What you describe is simply not possible with a passive material. Funnily your example of something shooting lasers is probably the only thing that could come close to actual damage
The most you can do is one of those adversarial patterns that just confuses the white balance and autofocus. There is nothing you can do to affect someone shooting in manual mode
If you could damage a camera by pointing it at something, the manufacturer would fix the issue before selling it, because no one is buying a camera that does.
I am thinking if you could wear a mirror that would direct all the sunlight right at the camera. That would have to be an active tracking system, but wouldn’t emit any light itself.
It would have to be parabolic and yeah as you suggest you would either need a big robotic rig to aim it or you would have to be very very obvious with your intent to damage given there’s pretty much only one specific place a given parabolic mirror can be to damage something else.
Parabolic would only work if the camera is in the focal point, so you’d need a different part of the parabola or a different parabola depending on where you are standing relative to the camera. This is in addition to the aiming mechanism.
And even then, I’m not convinced it will damage all camera techs instead of just overexposing the image or frame for some. If they just clamp the affected pixels instead of trying to maintain the relative brightness, they might be able to still see your face clearly.
Rick and Morty did this once, Rick simply put on a hat with a QR code that made a robot army recognize him as a high level commander.
A few days ago I read a short story,
comp.basilisk.faqby David Langford, which sketched a world in which specific images could irreversibly crash the brain, leading to a full scale worldwide ban on images on the internet and many other places as well. The story postulated hundreds of potential info-hazards with many of them simple enough to be applied via stencil and spray paint. Two of them are branch families of the Mandelbrot set ‘and no we won’t tell you where, do not look’Other examples;
- Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson
- Blit — David Langford
- The Atrocity Archives — Charles Stross
- Doctor Who — “Blink” / “The Time of the Doctor”
- SCP Foundation — SCP-096
- SCP-7387 (“The Mathematician’s Grin”)
“Keep your eyes peeled or we’ll peel them for you wholesale!”
You could maybe defeat LIDAR with retro reflectors or something. Probably not, but that’s the only case it’d be possible realistically, since it’s actively shooting lasers out that you could reflect back, without actually locating the camera. Anything else, yeah it’d require actively finding the camera and attacking it, since it is only receiving light. I guess if you wore something bright enough to damage any camera looking in your direction that would also work, but I don’t think it’d be considered passive, and you’d also blind everyone else who can see you, probably permanently, and it’d require huge amounts of energy.
There, technically, hypothetically, could be a situation where such shirt is possible. But it would require a bug in the camera firmware, which would probably work on just one camera model. For example, a shirt with a pattern that tricks the camera into detecting more faces than it was designed to, causing a buffer overflow and a crash. Reasonable, although extremely unlikely
I rolled my eyes at your optimism that such a material would exist but I took it all back by the end. Despite it being incredibly niche and unrealistic, that is by far the most clever suggestion in the thread!
