Flying Kills Pixels?

http://photorumors.com/2011/07/07/bringing-a-digital-camera-on-a-plane-kills-pix...

This looked quite interesting.

It's also documented that cosmic rays can knock out PCs. Theoretically possible if a high energy particle smacked into a nanometer sized transistor then a memory location is lost.

So I suppose that HEPs could equally take out a pixel; brain cell;.......

That's why we hide behind probability, "safe" in the knowledge that the odds are so small that it's unlikely.

If worryingly true - how come aliengrove produces such good pictures?

regards
Bernard

A bit worrying, especially for me, as my camera spends a lot of time above 20000 feet. Saying that, I have had my K7 with me for over 1000 hours flying time, and I have never seen any problems whatsoever with it. I have printed larger than A3 without noticing any black lines, as he says in the video, and never noticed anything in PP.

At work get monitored for gamma ray exposure, by route flown and altitude (flying over the poles produces the highest doses), and I apparently get a lot less than someone who lives in Aderdeen, where a lot of buildings are built from granite. So if gamma rays are a problem for cameras, then living in Aberdeen is worse for your camera than flying.

This has probably wrecked my chances of selling my K7 on the forum though..thanks John!

Can even produce rational thought, so brain cells seem ok too

Bernard

I just showed this to our Radiological Protection Supervisor. Who agree's it's quite possible, as background radiation is generally higher with altitude.
A filght from London to Paris exposes you to ~1/270th of the normal UK annual radiation dose, (going to NewYork is ~15 times more).
IIRC going to Cornwall can give even higher background radiation.

Howerver the effect will be very minimal and is unlikely to be noticable.
I'm quite sure the reason manufacturers ship by sea rather than air is unrelated - air freight is MUCH more expensive than sea freight!

Having just watched the video (it's blocked at work), I find the bulk of the presentation is putting a huge spin on things.

Film IS effected by gamma rays etc. (Probably more than digital)

Grazing light is NOT refracted vertically down through the layers in film (this would require the emulsion to have an infinite refractive index. He missed out on the fact that reflections from film are less or a problem than from digital sensors though.

Much of his comparisons were based on old digital technology, even though he mentions BAYER filters are used in nearly all modern cameras.

Not as much as it's wrecked the chance of someone
from Aberdeen selling one!