Comments on: Anti-paparazzi handbag

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Aren’t they already make dresses like this?

By: Roy Trumbull

Roy Trumbull — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

About 20 years ago I saw the demonstration of a film screen that I think was made by 3M. It reflected light only on axis. The camera shooting the screen saw it through a half silvered mirror via which a projector was supplying an image. Looking at the screen you could barely see the image. The benefit was that the studio lights on the foreground talent couldn’t wash out the image. I don’t know what it’s used for today but the patent has long since expired. A flash hitting that would surely blind the source camera.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

garyb50,

Whoosh.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

A while back I was walking down the sidewalk in the East Village minding my own business when I almost got knocked down by some asshole who turned out to be a paparazzi trying to get a shot of some famous Canadian poetess I never heard of. She was waiting at the counter in a little coffee shop. These people are despicable.

By: jondelorey

jondelorey — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

ON this 4th of July this reminds me of the song “Molasses to Rum”. We are all involved if we buy magazines that will pay a photographer up to $15,000 for a photo.

…and the photography skills required are far beyond that attempt to photograph the papparazzi in his car.

Now if I could only actually recognize a star (geek that I am)….

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Daniel Radcliffe came up with the perfect anti-paparazzo tool during his London run of Equus. He wore the same outfit to the theater every day. The paparazzi could take as many photos as they wanted, but they weren’t worth a penny after the first day.

By: EH

EH — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Couldn’t you use infrared LEDs or something to screw with the camera’s autofocus, white balance or exposure?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I ran into a pack of paparazzi trying to get a pic of Tony Parker and Eva Longoria shopping on La Cienega. One of them backed up 30 feet without looking behind him, snapping shots the whole way. Rather than move aside for this guy, I waited for him and elbowed him under his ribs. He was surprised but didn’t say anything. HA!

By: nosehat

nosehat — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ah paparazzi! If only we had an equally determined and pugnacious culture of journalists watching our politicians and corporate leaders the same way we scrutinize our entertainers.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Pictures of Assholes by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Support anti paps by linking to forum http://www.irresponsiblejournalism.in Voice your views and use Facebook and Twitter to raise awareness

By: Tdawwg

Tdawwg — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why all the paparazzi hate? If someone’s willing to make the Faustian bargain of allowing their mechanically-digitally replicated image to colonize the unconsciousness of an entire civilization, then their claims to privacy while in public are at best problematic. Paparazzi are just hackers, repurposing the masters’ technology (fame, media, images) and reusing it in ways that weren’t intended by the “owners” of said tech (the studios, the stars). If Fame is going to be actively created and marketed, then obviously subcultures interested in a piece of the Fame-product are going to arise. It’s copyfighting!

Paparazzi dip so many photographic handkerchiefs in the imagistic blood of fame-slain martyrs, then sell these saints’ relics to a grateful, idol-worshipping populace.

Hate not the humble paparazzo, that angelic messenger linking us with the Gods….

By: Roy Trumbull

Roy Trumbull — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

My favorite news shot was a bunch of shooters walking backwards maintaining follow focus as the cops were bringing in a suspect for booking. One hadn’t noticed there was a bench in the hall and tripped when he backed into it. Another shooter caught the accident on tape.

By: mrbill1234

mrbill1234 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I wonder if something like this would work for Gatsos/speed cameras.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

@1, I was thinking of the same thing some time ago but abandoned the idea because those powerful leds should be mounted near the plate, which could be considered some kind of tampering and would result in fines even worse than those for speeding.
If I had to implement a way to neutralize speeding cameras I would probably try to fool their speed detectors, not the camera itself.

By: Antiqueight

Antiqueight — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“We chased the pap back to his car and paced him in the snail-traffic with our cameras”

Thank you – I like this :-)

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Some sort of IR LED tiara and necklace combo work too.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I’m surprised that the flash on this is able to respond fast enough to actually disrupt the picture, but hey – if it works it’s pretty damn cool. I wonder if something similar could be done to throw off a camera’s auto-focus so it would work in the day as well. I guess the paps probably know how to manually focus though, and the high-end cameras don’t use IR for their auto-focus. Still probably worth exploring.

I don’t know that it’s really a mass-market product but I’m sure there are a few thousand potential customers in NY and LA that would be interested.

By: tomston

tomston — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

There was a political-comedy show in the UK in the early 90′s called the Friday/Saturday Night Armistice (from the Thick of It’s Armando Iannucci) which had a brilliant segment the one week, whereby the show hired a troop of Princess Diana look-alikes to stalk the tabloid paps and take photos of them. Good work!

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hate not the humble paparazzo, that angelic messenger linking us with the Gods….

I’ll remember that the next time that I ram your car or yell “fuckface’ at your children to get a reaction shot.

By: ShaneAH

ShaneAH — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Clever idea. Although anyone could get the same effect by sticking a slave flash on the side of her bag, so I don’t fancy his chances of finding investors.

By: garyb50

garyb50 — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Well, if that shot on flickr is any indication of your paparazzi skills, all I can say is “don’t give up your day job.”

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

“I wonder if something like this would work for Gatsos/speed cameras.”

I have a feeling this bag is based on high intensity IR LEDs. In theory a cluster around your number plate would have the same effect

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Paparazii – use the red eye reduction flash mode which issues two flashes thus triggering the bag on first.

Bag people – cover it in quality optical retroreflectors. They look good anyway and its passive so doing both flashes in above situation and multiple paps. Oh and because this is a publication a patent filed for this after today would be invalid.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I know some cameras pick up Infra-red, generally as a blue-white. I’ve seed a hoodie or hat that had powerful IR LEDs on in for obscuring video cameras. presumably some manner of IR always-on jewelry could possibly do similar.

By: karengeier

karengeier — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

seems to me that they need to make underwear of the same fabric.

By: WA

WA — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

If one wasn’t too concerned about weight, one could presumably put capacitors and batteries in the bag large enough to make the recycle times short enough that it could stop four paparazzi at once.

The claims of attempting to get a patent on this are dismaying, however, as I don’t see how it is anything more than a slave flash sewn into a handbag, and the idea of using a slave flash to ruin photographs is by no means original.

By: manicbassman

manicbassman — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

how can he patent this??? it’s merely another application of a slave flash trigger in common use by professional photographers… they use a small flash on the camera and the light trips the other flashes so they all go off together while the camera aperture is “open”…

http://www.digicamhelp.com/accessories/external-flashes/slave-flash/

By: El Fajio

El Fajio — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

But what does the bag look like?
Don’t you have any pictures of…oh

By: Patrick Dodds

Patrick Dodds — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t see how this could work. By the time the unit has detected the flash and thrown something back it is too late, unless the thing goes off at the speed of light, if you see what I mean, which I don’t think is possible is it? And all that talk of slave flashes – aren’t they primed to go off when they see another flash but they will be a bit later, by which time the pap’s shutter is closed.