Often on TV or YouTube when I watch videos where someone welds something the light produced by the welder, while bright, doesn’t even seem to overwhelm the camera. The point is bright, but the surrounding area is still visible by the viewer.
On the other hand it is very dangerous to look at welding as a bystander because it can very much blind you.
So, what’s up with the light sensors on camera’s? Is it not possible for them to burn out? Especially the large sensors of professional cameras should be quite sensitive to a bright light like that right? Or are there special thingamajigs that prevent that?
In: Technology
Welding creates a bright ultraviolet (UV) light. The cells in our eyes are especially susceptible to damage from strong UV light because they are living cells. UV can damage the DNA in cells which means the cells can’t repair themselves or reproduce when they age.
Digital cameras use silicon chips. They aren’t sensitive to UV light or as susceptible to UV damage as our eyes are. They can still be damaged by bright sources of light, but it has to be a lot brighter.
A few years ago there were news stories about digital cameras being permanently damaged by close proximity to a new type of self-driving car LIDAR which uses a powerful laser beam. The LIDAR maker intentionally chose a laser wavelength which is invisible and harmless to our eyes, because that wavelength of light is blocked by water (which our eyes are filled with), but digital cameras don’t have water in front of the sensors so the sensors were getting burned by the laser.
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