Wednesday 10 December 2008

That German Market again

I wasn't going to write about it again but then this has cropped up:
A RETIRED lawyer has claimed he was stopped from taking pictures of Edinburgh's Winter Wonderland by an event steward who told him it would "breach data protection laws".
There are plenty of comments and almost all are sensible.

The restriction seems to be on what the organisers call "long lens cameras". But as this chap points out, modern compact cameras often have zoom lenses that are considerably more powerful than the lenses used by the typical DSLR user. It also occurred to me that the more recent "full frame" DSLRs that have larger sensors than is usual are clearly bulkier than the "cropped sensor" DSLRs that most people use. Presumably the security operatives will find these large cameras to be especially threatening. But the larger sensors reduce the telephoto effect of any particular lens. Indeed, that's why the tiny sensors on compact cameras can produce such powerful telephoto effects.

As Mr Elder said:

There should be a clear notice displayed, explaining the rules.
And the rules would seem to be: powerful telephoto zoom lenses are fine unless the camera is large.

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comments made on previous template:

Alfred T Mahan
Technically, you're half right about sensor size. The reason a particular lens has a greater apparent focal length on a smaller sensor is merely that the edges of the image overlap the sensor and aren't recorded. When the image is printed out on a piece of paper of constant size the smaller sensor has recorded less information which is expanded to cover the paper, hence the apparent zoom effect. 
 
You can achieve the same effect with the same quality with the larger sensor by cropping in photo-editing software.

15 December 2008, 10:29:14 GMT
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Former Tory
One might have hoped that even a very gentlemanly, courteous retired lawyer (as I'm sure Mr Elder is) might have had the confidence and knowledge of the law to deal with an officious steward and his completely fictitious "data protection" concerns. 
 
Are we so cowed as a nation that we just do as petty officialdom says, when it says it?

14 December 2008, 14:24:26 GMT