Gene Moore
EF3
Has anyone successfully shielded out the glitches caused by nearby (1-2 mile) lightning strikes. My Sony VX 2000 gave me bad results on two occasions last season when I was trying to shoot a rain wrapped wall cloud/ suspected tornado. In both cases the lightning filled the viewfinder and was quite close. Also, the screen glitched and I got "squares or blocks" jumping across it. This is not a new problem for me, I can remember back to my old 3/4 inch video camera years ago having problems. Back then I got more of a fuzz across the screen instead of a jump in the video. The class answer would be to ground the camera, but how. Make a metal shield and ground that to the tripod? Would we have to make a complete faraday cage? Here is an excerpt from an article about protecting radios from EMP:
With radio's and smaller appliances, a Faraday cage can be built by using two cardboard boxes: one should fit tightly inside the other, and the item to be covered should itself fit reasonably well inside the smaller box. That is about the most work involved--finding the right size boxes! The outer box is then covered with aluminum foil or Mylar, as from a cheap "space blanket." A grounding wire is then taped to the foil. I then cover the foil with black 6 mil plastic, taped securely in place, to protect the foil from ripping. At the end of the ground wire I attach a cheap small alligator clip from Radio Shack. The item to be protected is placed inside the inner box, which acts as insulation from the outer box, and any EMP hitting the foil and is bled away by the ground wire.
What I get from this is an EMP burst is 100,000 volts per sq centimeter and (grounded) aluminum foil will protect it. Soooo, can we assume a camera could be likewise protected with a rather thin but grounded sheet of metal?
Gene Moore
With radio's and smaller appliances, a Faraday cage can be built by using two cardboard boxes: one should fit tightly inside the other, and the item to be covered should itself fit reasonably well inside the smaller box. That is about the most work involved--finding the right size boxes! The outer box is then covered with aluminum foil or Mylar, as from a cheap "space blanket." A grounding wire is then taped to the foil. I then cover the foil with black 6 mil plastic, taped securely in place, to protect the foil from ripping. At the end of the ground wire I attach a cheap small alligator clip from Radio Shack. The item to be protected is placed inside the inner box, which acts as insulation from the outer box, and any EMP hitting the foil and is bled away by the ground wire.
What I get from this is an EMP burst is 100,000 volts per sq centimeter and (grounded) aluminum foil will protect it. Soooo, can we assume a camera could be likewise protected with a rather thin but grounded sheet of metal?
Gene Moore
