The makers of PhotoBlocker spray claim that their product will make your license plate invisible to photo radar, red light cameras, and infrared and laster cameras. Special crystals in the spray will reflect back the flash (or light source) used by these cameras, making your license look like a bright blur. Would this actually work? Would it be legal if it did? They say that the spray is invisible to the naked eye, which means that it won't be of much use if a cop pulls you over. Personally, I've always thought someone should make a stealth car, made out of the same material as the stealth airplanes. That would be cool. (via Red Ferret)
Comments
"YOU SIR ARE A MORAN."
Wow, is that anything like a morOn?
"I should know because I got burrend when I both the fake stuff."
Did you intend to use the simple word "burned?"
Yup, I'M the stupid one here.
If you have any doubt and unacceptable of receiving the ticket, you can contacting or asking to local traffic management unit for that.
"There are like covering license plate number by anything thing can be"
Of course, the sellers will tell you that it works because they want you to buy it.
How did you test Photoblocker?
Did you use police approved equipment in a representative setup and process the resultant negatives to achieve a full contrast positive and examine that? If not then whatever testing you have done is invalid.
"How did you test Photoblocker?
Did you use police approved equipment in a representative setup and process the resultant negatives to achieve a full contrast positive and examine that? If not then whatever testing you have done is invalid."
Silly Smeggy. Don't you know that Photoblocker is a faith-based product? It only works if you BELIEVE it does.
Now, there was one prob' with the way they applied it on the plate ! They just sprayed it straight on the plate at the track then took off. They didn't as they claim follow the instructions - you are meant to let the first coat dry, then reapply the second coat, and it has to be practically 'baked on' sitting in the sun, they suggest to leave it in the sun all day with as long as possible between coasts being the best way to apply it.
And, TopGear in the UK had already tested out the speed camera theory using an Aston Martin (I think ?) to beat the camera - they got up to 140 MPH and the flash camera never went off ! MB's 'only' got to 100 MPH...
So as is usual on MB's, they get close with their mythbusting but half their experiments are flawed, that's why they keep having to 'revisit' the stories later on. Jamie and Adam are not scientist's and it's just an emtertainment excercise.
I've seen quite a number of their experiments that have been done by other's over the years with completely opposite results obtained. What irks me most about MB's is the way they are so 'final' with their judgements. I visit their forum and they only revisit old stories because of the outcry of forum poster's.
Adam got the car up to 129mph if I recall, and the professional driver got it up to 140. It would only really be an option on the highway as anyplace else would probably be too unsafe or not long and straight enough. And I don't think I'd risk the extra hundreds that a ticket for 140 would add, as opposed to one for 80.
As for their track record, while they're not scientists they have been right far more often than they've been wrong. Most of the complaints have to do with them not taking the time to check out variations in a myth, or at least those tests not making it to air.
The photostopper spray works just as well as Photostopper,
that site http://www.photoblockercanada.com sells both types now, i asked why and they said the Photostopper spray is the original anti-flash made in Canada, they save allot of money on shipping costs... so they stock that also.
as for people saying is does not work these sights on youtube say they do too,
they also have the covers on CSI:miami....lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHloGrA3Sfw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_bwH53kBdA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye2O9HzYO-U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_bwH53kBdA
I have already commented on this. I repeat:
Richard
If you DO get a ticket, I'm sure the manufacturer would say that the stuff doesn't work if it's been on the plate(s) for three years.
If you DON'T get a ticket, one person's situation still hardly constitutes a real "test" of the product's efficacy.
Again, I'll let you know.
To do that scientifically, you would have to have many people in many different cars apply the stuff as recommended and drive past a calibrated and proven-to-operate traffic camera a number of times each. Then you would have to see if the camera caught some of them, and how many.
By the way, at least in Washington D.C. as of a few years back, some of the traffic cameras were dummies, there to intimidate people into not running red lights. They couldn't catch anyone doing anything.
You are trying to make the case that this spray can make your license plate "invisible" to a camera, therefore the burden of proof is on you.
Your personal experience, while interesting, does not constitute PROOF that the stuff works. As I said, to do that scientifically, you would have to have many cars using the stuff (and some NOT using it) under a variety of controlled conditions. Anything short of that is merely anecdotal.
i guess i'll keep searching for the truth
I don't give a flyin' fart fudge cycle what you think or believe about anything.
I said I would reveal what happens with my personal situation - and.. "if I do not receive a ticket in the mail I would personally recommend the product".
today 04/21/07 I received a ticket in the mail with all the qualifications for a valid citation. Therefore, I do not personally recommend purchasing this (Photo Blocker) product.
Sincerely, Richard
"Cranky,
I don't give a flyin' fart fudge cycle what you think or believe about anything."
You ARE a charmer, aren't you? So, how much did you pay for that Dale Carnegie course?
Hey, everyone, Richard got a ticket! Alert the media.
Jamie
I sprayed the plate about 8-10 layers, after each layer I waited for it dry and take a picture with my digital cam from different angles then applied another layer.
I keep doing that but every single picture shown the license plate clearly, so I kept applying the product. I used almost entire can of spray, it advertised that it supposedly enough for 4 plates but I used about 5/6 of the can and it still show the plate clearly on my digital camera from many different angles and distances from the plate so i gave up.
For the people that made it works, how did you do it ??
The product only give my plate a very shinny clear coat paint over the plate, it is quite thick too since i used almost the entire can but still does not work.
If you were fairly close (say 3 meters), off angle from perpendicular (say 10-20 degrees), you utilised the flash AND you can still make out the lettering, then I would say you bought a useless glossy lacquer.
Did you test it on a retro reflective plate (UK style) or a non-retro reflective plate?
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Speed Measurement Laboratories -- consultants to police departments and radar and radar-detector makers worldwide -- has tested most products designed to defeat photo enforcement, including car waxes and stealth sprays that claim to make cars "invisible to radar," photo-flash devices designed to flash back at cameras and the high-gloss tag sprays.
"There's a lot of good people in the industry who are honest and a lot of charlatans. But it doesn't work, that's the bottom line," says Carl Fors, owner of the Fort Worth company.
The bounce-back-the-flash concept does work sometimes, he says, but only on positive images traffic cameras produce. "If we reverse the image, go to a negative image, we can read every letter on a license plate," he says.
Fors says the firms that make and operate radar camera systems and analyze the photos for municipalities routinely check negatives where license plates look unreadable. "Going to the negative image is no big deal," he says.
PhotoBlocker's Scott concedes that adjusting the images can "sometimes" reveal the tag numbers, but "these companies will just throw out anything that's questionable. They don't want to have to dispute it in court and it's not cost-effective for them."
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That right there is the preventative. You mess up the image just enough so that it doesn't make fiscal sense for a company auto-processing tens of thousands of these images daily to pursue things further. Basically, you just slip through the cracks.
Far as I'm concerned, a miss is as good as a mile, and no ticket is the point, however one arrives at it.
"There's a lot of good people in the industry who are honest and a lot of charlatans. But it doesn't work, that's the bottom line," says Carl Fors, owner of the Fort Worth company.
C:\photoblocker\DSC01326.JPG
C:\photoblocker\DSC01329.JPG
Works very good at night
C:\photoblocker\DSC01208.JPG
C:\photoblocker\DSC01211.JPG
as you can see it works and this is with a digicam flash, the speed camera flash is a lot more powerful
some of the pic you can see some of my letter but you cant make it out
Mate, those are good photos but cameras use FILM and you used a DIGITAL camera. Film is much harder to saturate than a digital imager, the latter having a limited dynamic range for all pixels. Also, because of the saturated nature of your digital photos, the jpeg compression algorithms WILL remove some of the detail; again that does not apply to film. Film would also record at a higher effective resolution than what you
I see all the time people hook up a lap top in the red-light camera and download the images I don
In a typical system, cameras are positioned at the corners of an intersection, on poles a few yards high. The cameras point inward, so they can photograph cars driving through the intersection. Generally, a red-light system has cameras at all four corners of an intersection, to photograph cars going in different directions and get pictures from different angles. Some systems use film cameras, but most newer systems use digital cameras.
all of them in australia is digital they only started poping up 2-3 years ago
Besides, digital imagers can be made to do something special. Your average consumer digicam uses an 8-bit, slightly non-linear, fixed gain ADC (across each photo), as well as a cheap CCD imager, the pixel wells of which can
i didn
Film and specially setup digital cameras can capture a very wide range of light intensities, especially compared to cheaper consumer digital cameras storing photos using the poorer JPEG format. Also, many plates are retro-reflective anyway (just like what your spray is supposed to be to be able to blind the camera) so enforcement cameras have to be setup to be able to photo plates with a PROPER retro-reflective backing without the risk of blooming or saturation. Therefore, the whiteout you see in your photos, impressive at they may appear to be, is not a reflection of what it would look like in a real enforcement photo.
In fact, closely examine the area immediately below the plate in your photos. There is a very strong white haze where it should be totally dark (apart from the first photo); that haze alone registers more than halfway up the displayed intensity scale. This is indicative of a poor camera optics system; it could well be this artefact alone that resulted with the lettering of the plate being almost indistinguishable.
Your photos have proven one critical thing to me:
Whether or not your plate is retro-reflective, the spray you used, while seemingly retro-reflective, is not retro-reflective enough to render the lettering indistinguishable from the background. In fact, the background would likely have been many times brighter than the characters, but your setup will have masked this so casting the FALSE ILLUSION that they are washed out.
In English: even though your test is invalid, it still proves your spray to be a total failure. Sorry.
If I may repeat myself:
I can even dismiss the photo (from the video) of the result of the "independent testing" on Phantomplate.com - why? Basic examination of the image shows it has been severely subjected to compression artifacting (you can easily see the 8x8 blocks where the average intensity has been used, yet I clearly see some detail on the plate!?!?!). I note the Denver Police Department didn
im still selling the spray and covers and have been doing well,
now that summer is here i will be at a number of car shows and show and shins...
the covers work great and teh spray is working well,
i sell the photostoper spray and not teh photoblocker spray now,
teh only reson i changes is because teh Photostopper is made and shipped in Canada, i saved me thousands in S/H cost.
but i stil sell plenty.
I think you are photoblocker, and mad at on track that they sell better products.
Their Photostopper works great, and it does not yellow on your plate like the other one does. It is cheaper tooo.
Ontrack is business the longest, before any other guys even existed!!! Their sprays have been around for way longer than anybody. They know what they are doing. I have a cover and spray, and no tickets for a very long time.
What Dorf says is true. Look here:
http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/press.aspx?id=3712
The attorney general has leaned on Photoblocker really heavy, for doing bad stuff, like deceiving people and lying about their products. They got a huge fine of $25,000 for doing this.
On Track is the way to go boys. 😊
If you had actually read and digested the posts in this thread, you would have realised that deliberately triggering a camera and not getting a ticket is not proof that the sprays really work. This was the point of my contribution to this thread - to highlight and logically explain the flaws in the given arguments, not simply to spout "yes it does, no it doesn't". I'm also looking for real results, but I like to know that the claimed 'reality' is genuine! If you wish to simply take posts at face value, then Steve