RED air transport, gamma radiation, and effect on sensor?

[sbroock]

This is Bullshit plain and simple. The earths magnetic field is what protects us from the majority of Gamma and X-ray radiation and it extends thousands of miles into space.

There is no way that 5 miles in the air adds any significant risk factor for exposure to cosmic radiation. Even the Apollo moon astronouts were safely inside the earths magnetic field!

That picture is awesome. I don't think that the original comment was meant to indicate that a normal flight would blast you with quite this much radiation. :)

Rather, he was indicating the potential for a dead pixel, which may or may not be non-trivial.

I was just curious whether this was a real or remote consideration when transporting the camera.

Best,
Scott

[Andrew M.]

There is no way that 5 miles in the air adds any significant risk factor for exposure to cosmic radiation. Even the Apollo moon astronouts were safely inside the earths magnetic field!

I agree with this that 5 miles in the airplane or outside of the building on the open surface of the Earth is no difference.
However if Gamma burst of strong intensity will happen (and it happened few times in last 20 years or so) then watch your CMOS and not only CMOS equipment. We lost few memory chips in the past in the satellites.
Recently however the new technology of radiation hardened memory chips for space application, plus proper lightweight shielding, fixes this problem.
The good news is that strong Gamma burst do not happen very often and do last for very short time and if it is night when it happen you are safe.
Hey! it is how we mutate from monkeys, cosmic radiation, remember?
What won't kill you makes you stronger.....

Andrew

[Justin Anderson]

easy fix; Mysterium can have a lead casing on five sides with lead lenscap. :D

[Steve Tammi]

I hopped a flight to New Mexico but when I got there I found my Nikon D200 sensor bursting from the camera body as a hulking 8K behemoth CMOS sensor. While the outstanding resolution and 1000 fps are nice the camera has become extremely temperamental and prone to fits of 16K and higher imagery if handled too roughly.

Sincerely,

Dr. Robert Bruce Banner

[Jason Francois]

Will Kryptonite help?

[Anders Holck]

A few years ago, I did a movie in argentina, and we bringed all the equipment from spain. When I arrived there, the F900 had a dead pixel. Of course is a CCD, and not a CMOS, but sony said that the gamma radiaton may be the cause.

I think every single F900, F750 I have ever used always shoved one or two hot pixels if they arrived with a reset setup from the rental place.
You just need to do one single Black balance operation and the pixels will be mapped out. But as the mapping is saved into flashram in the camera, a reset of the settings might flush the map as well and you'll suddenly see all the hot ones.

[sbroock]

I hopped a flight to New Mexico but when I got there I found my Nikon D200 sensor bursting from the camera body as a hulking 8K behemoth CMOS sensor. While the outstanding resolution and 1000 fps are nice the camera has become extremely temperamental and prone to fits of 16K and higher imagery if handled too roughly.

Sincerely,

Dr. Robert Bruce Banner

HAHAHA! You not want to make mysterium mad! You not like mysterium mad!

[Rob Lohman]

Hmmm, my little Canon digicam has suddenly developed a dead pixel after a few flights to and from the US (33000 miles up, for 10+ hours). I'm gonna compare photos I took before the first flight, in between the flights and after the last one.

[JohnF]

Radiation is a threat to all electonics not just the sensors...

You have a constant source of background radiation around you all the time. This is mostly in the form of cosmic rays (having travelled immense distances across the universe). At 30,000+ feet one is above most of the atmosphere that aborbs cosmic rays so there is a chance of recieving a higher dose esp if you fly over the poles (where Earth's magnetic field can channel the solar wind/radiation down to Earth). Some of the extra-solar system radiation is very hard indeed, recent discoveries have demonstrated that occassionally(very rare) you'll get a particle with the energy of a baseball moving at 27km/h! That'll wreck almost anything electronic.

That said the chances encountering enough "hard" radiation that'll cause dead pixels within Earth's environment are pretty slim but remember your luggage including camera will pass through an X-ray machine before flight. The close proximity and intensity of that exposure is the MOST likely source of any damage.

JohnF

[Andrew M.]

Hmmm, my little Canon digicam has suddenly developed a dead pixel after a few flights to and from the US (33000 miles up, for 10+ hours). I'm gonna compare photos I took before the first flight, in between the flights and after the last one.

Woow!! 33,000 miles up, for 10 hours !!
Rob, I didn't know that you are already flying one of these:
http://sd-mirror.dumitru.com/scaled/
Space Ship One
I guess it is good to be RED team member these days...:-)
You can try all these new things.

Andrew