http://youtu.be/J0TgaGePhJA

AND

http://youtu.be/5hMQ2027vJM

AND

http://youtu.be/DNWiYQmqavc

thanks for the heads up :)

Thanks!

Yep and worse still, I know guys who work at venues who aim the lazers at cameras on purpose. They warn everybody not to film, and when they don't listen...BAM! When I work at venues, it's strange how I never get targeted eh!!!!! The person then complains, but the venue says 'It's legit lighting for the show......and we warned you not to film'............I just don't shoot when the lazers ar active.

Well, most of the concerts I shoot don't have lasers but this certainly tells me none of the concerts from now on will have them. :-)

I wonder if a strong neutral density filter would help any? (As if such lighting is already tricky enough to film or photograph. But I won't risk my own equipment to find out. There are also laser safety glasses, but a quick search doesn't show much in the way of specialty lens filters with the same qualities.)

Seems understandable though, it's also why you don't shoot towards the sun during mid-day either.

Can't be good to get hit in the eyes either. But if the injury isn't too bad, it will eventually heal. Somebody that thought they were funny with a "cat-toy" laser pointer left me with an after image and a migraine for a day and a half. (It healed up eventually - no noticable blind spot, but think of the "tracer" you see from a camera flash not going away as quickly.) Some places actually have rules that restrict such lighting so it doesn't go into the crowd because of eye-injury incidents.

I guess you can use the lens from a welding helmet and open 20 stops or so, ha ha!

Actually, I have a quick change welding lens that darkens the instant you strike an arc, supposedly in nanoseconds. So why couldn't you use one of these in front of the lens for protection? It is clear until the arc starts and seems instantaneous to me. It might just be cheap protection since you can buy replacement units and they are larger than most lenses.

If you wouldn't point your camera directly at the sun, why would you point it at laser light?

Many people do point their camera directly at the sun, regardless of the risks, which are slight, but I think the problem here was to prevent damage from lasers pointed at a camera unexpectedly or perhaps deliberately. Anyone shooting in music venues today will see lots of lasers. Also, oblique angles of laser light hitting or scattered by smoke machines and dust are very interesting subjects, as are people dancing in such a location.

Also, for myself, a colleague is developing a current control system for a very high intensity LED which is a 'near-laser' product, and I have been wondering how to safely shoot some of the optical effects I have already observed indirectly. The effects are extremely interesting to me and I have no idea what a good camera sensor might see.

Wayne

Reading a camera mag eariler today, article about beach photography, that talked about long exposures shooting towards the sun. Which seems to break every rule, but the trick was like pauljs75 said a very high ND grad filter.

Though I've found you can get in sun shots without grads if you're carefull.

Like the top two, taken the day of the ash cloud. I know plane windows are polarised, and with the UV filter on, I figured a couple of hit and hope shots without using the viewfinder shouldn't fry either the camera or me. While the top left is dire, the top right looked lovely when printed and the camera still works fine.

Or sometimes like the bottom one, you just get lucky, this one was caught when panning.

thanx for the info

in futer I will take my analog Sigma SA 300 to concerts in  just in case....