trance energy

[SideFX]

And i also agree that warning signs would be nice..

They should add 'wear earplugs' to the signs while they're at it.. man that soundsystem made my heart skip a beat :s

oh oh don't forget 'stare at half naked raverchick with huge boyfriend at own risk'

[oliverst14@hotmail.com]

They should add 'wear earplugs' to the signs while they're at it.. man that soundsystem made my heart skip a beat :s

oh oh don't forget 'stare at half naked raverchick with huge boyfriend at own risk'

too right they should hehe

Im not sure you are perceiving this from their perspective Oliver.

You are coming to ilda with accusations of an unsafe show and it is their job to defend the laser display community. You are also bringing these accusations to bear on one of the most well know and respected Laserisits in the world. I think the email is well worded and quiet poignant. They have given their opinion of the issue and offered to assist you in getting ahold of hugo. What were you expecting?

And i also agree that warning signs would be nice..

first iv not gone to them telling of an unsafe laser show. iv gone to them bringing it to there attention that something has gone wrong. iv not stated unsafe laser show once.
second i respect hugo as one of the best laserists too and wanted to find out what has happened. as iv put on here it could have been just my camera but i want to see what all parties opinion is.
it is well worded and have no problem with what they put.
im not expecting anything else from them except for the calculations which i suspect they wont give.

thats what i said so i dont see what your post is asking.

i think your jumping to conclusions that im going round shooting my mouth off but im not. im just looking for what people feel about the incident.

cheers ollie

[QUAZAR]

I used to warning signs up at the entrance to gigs I did, when we were using heavy-weight strobes.

[dream beamz]

I found another video with that same segment. I too think it was not the lasers that killed it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLBaijq3_o4
watch in HD 2:33-2:34 mark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXZpSwR8zBY
2:56 mark

You didnt seem to be getting any direct laser exposure at the time and the led flash was intense.

Now for my opinion on these across the pond laser shows. I have never felt they were safe (and used to be criticized on this forum for saying it years ago) and I am sure I am going to find out when I go to a few shows in Ibiza and elsewhere over the summer.

what irritates me the most, the line up for this TE was really one for the ages and I was supposed to be there and got a better job offer so i stayed here.


Disturbing enough but unrelated to the above
The intros (or intermissions between DJs if you want to look at it like that) are choreographed with all the lighting, lasers included.
During paul van dyks intro it says "scanning musical memories of crowd" and beams lasers extremely close to the crowd directly down to them. I have no doubt this was a request from ID&T to the laser company that the lasers take a scan like that of the crowd but the beams start out really close together

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdG8_SpUi7w
2:20 mark

look at the beaming they get at the 8:10 mark of the same video

[White-Light]

TBH in my non expert opinion, its usually static beams or high power scans that cause problems with cameras. My own personal non expert opinion is that if can burn out a pixel it can burn a retina. I'm sure silicon is more resistant that soft eye tissue.

There are a lot of Awakenings shows on Youtube shot by amateurs that don't damage the cameras or white out the sensors from direct laser hits / scans.

I also have laser videos shot myself firstly on a Canon IXUS 30 and secondly on a Casio Z80. These include multi watt greens which resulted in direct camera hits and also a green at a small club I go to that I stated earlier actually hurt my eye temporarily as it was almost certainly over safe power levels (just a chinese laser placed on top of a speaker in sound to light) power thowing pencil beams around in a very small room, think 15 feet from a class IIIB pencil beam. Again direct hits, no damage.

Here are some pics of the mutliwatt greens;

1st pic shows the brightness (the guy illuminated in front of the camera is lit by the REFLECTION of the laser off the BACK of the other guys shirt!!!). This puts the power into perspective:




This is then one of several direct sensor hits to my camera from the same multiwatt lasers:



No damage suffered despite multiple hits.

Strobes don't damage cameras either in my experience - I've certainly never ever heard of this. The clubs I go to use some of the most intense strobe and most powerful blinders there are and yet whereas my camera may white out from the brightness overpowering the sensor, on both cameras I've never suffered any kind of damage.

Blinders - 12 on the arch, unknown number below:




Some temporary sensor smear but no damage.


Strobes (about as powerful as they get - Total Camera white out) - no damage:





To my mind, if its damaged the sensor it was most likely too strong to be eye safe although this is a personal non expert opinion not a statement of fact.

[dream beamz]

To my mind, if its damaged the sensor it was most likely too strong to be eye safe although this is a personal non expert opinion not a statement of fact.

I simply think the camera itself was weak, bad part right out of manufacturing. I myself have taken much brighter shots than what seemed to take out the camera.

[heroic]

It really, really, really depends on the camera. Some cameras are optimised for high sensitivity and have very small sensors- notably, the Fuji compacts have been sold on their great low light performance for a long time. These cameras depend upon mechanical aperture diaphragms to protect very sensitive sensors that are also physically very small. In conditions such as laser shows, they generally can't respond quickly enough to the radical changes of illumination they're seeing, and this is what tends to let them get damaged.

Neither does it follow that a sensor is necessarily more robust than a retina. While this may be true on large image sensors, the much smaller ones used in phones and ultracompact cameras are easily damaged when they are overexposed. My N95 has many dead pixels caused not by a laser, but by the desert sun! I certainly didn't damage my eyes in the process. Remember also that cameras can't blink, and in many cases the iris response may be an order of magnitude slower than a human's photopic reflex.

[oliverst14@hotmail.com]

yes its pretty worrying especially when considering that these lasers are 10 watt units. as stated they are not on full power but all the same very high powered.

i do realise the flash was bright and could have caused the problem but something that time was different as id recorded many videos through the nite with exactly the same bright flash and nothing happened.

im coming to the conclusion that this laser show was not entirely to blame and was probably audiance safe in the way some people see safe. but are we entirely sure that this is really safe.

fair enough someone has set guidelines but this doesnt mean that these are entirely correct.
iv always thought audiance scanning was beautiful and great to watch but now im changing my opinion and going towards the american way of thinking.

the lasers at this event looked amazing but how amazing does something have to look before someone gets injured.

to be honest i really wish my camera was ok cause it really has changed my opinion of what a safe show is. before this i wanted to learn how i could do a safe audiance scanned show but now i dont really see how an entirely safe audiance scanned show is possible.

cheers ollie

[Lasernerd]

TBH in my non expert opinion, its usually static beams or high power scans that cause problems with cameras. My own personal non expert opinion is that if can burn out a pixel it can burn a retina. I'm sure silicon is more resistant that soft eye tissue.

There are a lot of Awakenings shows on Youtube shot by amateurs that don't damage the cameras or white out the sensors from direct laser hits / scans.

I also have laser videos shot myself firstly on a Canon IXUS 30 and secondly on a Casio Z80. These include multi watt greens which resulted in direct camera hits and also a green at a small club I go to that I stated earlier actually hurt my eye temporarily as it was almost certainly over safe power levels (just a chinese laser placed on top of a speaker in sound to light) power thowing pencil beams around in a very small room, think 15 feet from a class IIIB pencil beam. Again direct hits, no damage.

Here are some pics of the mutliwatt greens;

1st pic shows the brightness (the guy illuminated in front of the camera is lit by the REFLECTION of the laser off the BACK of the other guys shirt!!!). This puts the power into perspective:




This is then one of several direct sensor hits to my camera from the same multiwatt lasers:



No damage suffered despite multiple hits.

Strobes don't damage cameras either in my experience - I've certainly never ever heard of this. The clubs I go to use some of the most intense strobe and most powerful blinders there are and yet whereas my camera may white out from the brightness overpowering the sensor, on both cameras I've never suffered any kind of damage.

Blinders - 12 on the arch, unknown number below:




Some temporary sensor smear but no damage.


Strobes (about as powerful as they get - Total Camera white out) - no damage:





To my mind, if its damaged the sensor it was most likely too strong to be eye safe although this is a personal non expert opinion not a statement of fact.

You have to be kidding!!
That amount of power on the crowd...man that is wrong! my .00002

[White-Light]

You have to be kidding!!
That amount of power on the crowd...man that is wrong!

The show was done properly, I don't know the laser company involved.

I was chatting to Mark (Insanity) at UKLEM and he says they're very keen over here now. Everything pattern has to be MPE metered in the empty venue before a licence is issued. Often in front of a guy from the radiological protection board as well as the local authority!!

The pictures also don't tell the full truth - the scan speed was extremely high which is why the camera doesn't even smear from the hit yet the frame showing the reflection off the back of the guys shirt shows the laser to be bright.