Damage to Camera Sensor from Laser Pointer?
Even a 1 mW laser beam can potentially produce permanent damage to the CCD or silicon sensor array insid e a video or still digital camera. If the camera is focused at infinity, a collimated laser beam will be focused to a tiny spot on the image sensor. Whether damage will occur depends on many factors including the type of image sensor, quality and focus of the optics, and how long the beam is held in one place. A 1 mW beam (much less than what some laser pointers produce) is roughly equivalent to the brightness of the noonday Sun at the equator on a clear day and when focused to a 10 um spot (the approximate size of one pixel on a typical video camera) it becomes 10,000 times more intense! Needless to say, pointing a camera at the Sun is generally not recommended. • Back to Diode Lasers Sub-Table of Contents. Anatomy of Fiber-Coupled Laser Diodes Fiber-coupled laser diodes or diode lasers – same thing – aren’t the sort of thing you will find at your local K-Mart but may turn up surpl
