Interview With the Man Who Could Destroy Photography | Hacker News Reader

Interview With the Man Who Could Destroy Photography

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17 pointsnickb14 comments

I've never seen such hype. Does anyone actually think "the possibilities are endless," that this device "is a prankster's dream" and "could destroy photography"? I am skeptical of the physics described but since I'm not a digicam expert I will just have to trust von Bismarck solved an apparent latency problem. (When my digicam flashes, the fulgerator has to receive that input and respond with its own flash, all before my shutter closes.) Ambient and direct lighting would both have to be below normal daytime levels and the subject needs to be dark enough to contrast the fulgerator's light. I wish this guy all the luck due a man caught adulterating vacation photos but I don't see how he has developed a viable tool. Maybe if I followed his über optics hack, I'd understand the secret implications of his toy.

"(When my digicam flashes, the fulgerator has to receive that input and respond with its own flash, all before my shutter closes"

This really isn't a problem. People have been using on-camera flashes to trigger studio lighting for decades now. A flash is actually between 1/700 and 1/2500 seconds long, which is plenty of time for the electronics to react. You shutter is probably going to be open between 1/60 and 1/250 seconds (if you're on P mode).

You can see this at nearly any wedding you go to, the pro photographer might have some studio lights set up for the formals, unless he's using fancy radio triggers, his lights can be set off by guests with cameras.

"You couldn't take a photograph of a tourist attraction ever again without worrying that some marketing crap would be pushed into your camera."

Ooooh! Look! Those guys from Coke f*cked up all my photos. Guess I'd better go and buy lots of Coke then.

Sometimes it looks like marketers actually think like that, judging by the amount of IN YOUR FACE advertising that I can't in my right mind fantasize that it might reflect well on a brand.

Propagandists of all kinds come to mind.

I can see this messing up current cameras but couldn't the added images just be removed with embeddable postprocessing logic?

Automated post processing won't work well because it is an arbitrary superimposed image, but the big key here is that it only works for flash photographs. They say that in the article but then drop it. Tourist attractions are generally the wrong scale for flashes to be required. Overblown.

Right, well, people who have even a bit familiar with photography know that, but most people with their point-and-click digital cameras don't.

They'll still get, er, fulgerated.

With digital cameras having preview screens, I suspect you'd notice pretty quickly. Besides, this won't scale well to multiple flashes going off in succession. As for monetisation, uh, I don't see the potential, but if people are willing to pay for the tech then I can't argue with that.

This would be pretty awesome for celebrities tired of the paparazzi, or for Britney to revisit 2004.

It would not function in that environment as hundreds of flashes are going off all at once.

This hack is one camera, one flash, one angle, close range, once every 30 seconds or so.

I can think of half a dozen ways to defeat this, as any hacker could. Seems to me to be much ado about nothing.

It seems to me that this could easily be defeated by switching on 'red eye reduction' to produce a smaller flash moments before the main flash.

Read the article. It claims he's using certain technology to detect fake red-eye flash from real flashes when a photo is being taken.

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