Can an infared light or a powerful laser disable surveillence cameras?

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Burning Laser

i was wondering if a powerful laser could burn the lense in a surveillence camera or an infared light could disable them

thanks in advance

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4 Responses to Can an infared light or a powerful laser disable surveillence cameras?

  1. †°ff says:
    July 28, 2011 at 10:18 am

    Yes i could easly make a laser that would melt a security camera, but why bother when you can just hit it with a stick…

  2. zaphodsclone says:
    July 28, 2011 at 10:18 am

    Might be just movie gimmick bs but I have seen laser pointers used to disrupt cameras.

  3. Mark says:
    July 28, 2011 at 10:18 am

    We’ve been watching one too many science fiction or action adventure movies, haven’t we?

    If you take the average camera lens in a security camera to have a diameter of one or two inches, A laser powerful enough to damage such a lens would cost you several thousand dollars to build, and would be so big it would require a flat-bed truck to get it to the house you want to break in to…that might wake someone up!

    Infrared light would not show up at all on a regular security camera. With an IR security camera, however, it would show up as an image of you carrying an infra-red light. Think about it, what would you see through a regular camera if you shone a flashlight at it? That’s right, you’d see you shining a flashlight!

  4. Ross says:
    July 28, 2011 at 10:18 am

    Absolutely! Unlike Mark’s explanation which is demeaning and wrong…

    The laser does NOT destroy the lens of the camera at all. The laser actual overloads a grid section of the sensor which does the detection and then causes a bleed over into other neighbouring grid points. This would appear as either a coronal flash or light blob on the observation end. This method will only work while the laser is aimed at the lens and a small reflex time for the sensor to bounce back into normal use. If you did want to avoid a post production filter one would need a red (cheap), green (expensive, at the moment), and blue (not on the market as a pointer, maybe steal one from a BlueRay player). As the camera is more sensitive in the green range (as are your eyes) you could remove some post production filtering ability (via range) by using a green laser.

    A stronger than normal commercial, over 100mW, may be able to permanently harm the camera’s detector, but I don’t know. Also, if you are using a standard pointer and are counting on the generated flare to keep you safe, then you should know that it can be filtered digitally in post production, so don’t plan to rob any banks…