Lasers are pretty cheap like $10 on eBay but you need particles in the air to make them visible. Whatever you do, do not get a laser shone into a camera. We've lost a couple of cameras to them.

Bob.

Bob, is that the normal "pointer" laser? These must be not greater than 1mW in power. What was the power involved and what was the damage?

EffectsLab Pro
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Mike

Serena, Bob is correct about not pointing the pointer laser into the camera because it can damage many red pixels. Remember, most light sources work under the old rule 1/r2 , where r=distance, so, farther away the light the energy delivered is E*1/r2. This why reflectors on lights are critical in lighting. But lasers are different, the only energy loss is from air absorption, (plus a little diffraction). So the laser beam delivers a large amount of energy per mm2 over distance. ;-)

Don't know for certain but pretty certain they were "disco" lasers which can be around 30mW. We were left with squiggly lines of dead pixels in the sensor.

Bob.

Is this In-Prod or Post-Prod?

Grazie

By my reading of the original question either.

Bob.

If you don’t have extra tools try this in Vegas
http://www.zoopy.com/video/2b1h/laser-fx-in-sony-vegas?browse=4u7h

on the laser there is some noise texture which loses in a small render but looks effective in a HD render


I can send you a veg just ping me

Bob thanks for that info It could save someone a lot of hassle and money in the future

Rory

This is the same veg with smoke as mask and comped dodge for light fx


http://www.zoopy.com/video/2b6l/sony-vegas-laser-fx-with-smoke?browse=4u7h

I forgot to mention before for anyone that wants to do this the old fashion in camera way. Laser beams aren't very visible despite what Hollywood would lead us to believe. They need particles of something in the air to be visible.
The old standby smoke in a can seems hard to comeby however I've read from the guys who still do this that hairspray works a treat. If sprayed high into the air it dries before it touches anything so is easily cleaned up. That sounds good to me as the old stuff was basically white oil which if nothing else would make a museum floor very slippery and dangerous. My only concern is the hairspray particles could be quite inflammable so no naked flames.

Good article on "fog" here.

For anyone who thinks I'm a big foggy for get wound up about fog you'll notice in that article that The Academy has handed out three awards for development of fog juice and fog machines. Battery powered foggers are pretty cheap and can add a lot to a set, most crews I come across have one in the van.

Bob.

Bob, thanks for the fog article link, I learned something useful from that.

It also led me to Fat Beam™ lasers.

These have a 10-14 mm (about 1/2") beam, for $249 and up, 10 mW diodes.

Regular 2 to 5 watt industrial lasers have really come down in price lately. You could set up a mirror system that would be easily visible with 1 watt and higher power systems in low light.

All the laser technology maturing and coming down in cost is going to be great for reducing 3D projection costs in the future.

Easily visible all right, but if someone or something (a camera) gets hurt, you pay.

Merely thousands for the camera, but could be hundreds of thousands (or more) for the someone with vision loss.

There are federal regulations about the strength of lasers used for public entertainment, and that may cost you statutory fines in addition to the civil lawsuit that would appear instantly if someone got hurt.

Better stick with the 10 milliwatt class lasers if there are people involved.