
Fujifilm’s first surveillance camera can read a license plate from 1km away - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/7/24/20708236/fujifilm-sx800-security-camera-long-range-1000mm-focal-length-image-stabilization-heat-haze-fog
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1024core
I have a Nikon P900, which I bought 4 years ago. I think it would be able to
identify a license plate from 1km too. I took a photo of a couple at a
restaurant ~3km away, and you could identify the gender and skin color.

The P900 has been succeeded by the P1000, which is the same focal length as
this one.

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rahimnathwani
From the article: "Nikon’s P1000 has a 125x, 3000mm-equivalent zoom lens for
example"

This new camera has a 1000mm-equivalent lens.

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m463
I have the P1000, it is amaaaazing.

The moon will completely fill the frame.

You can look at airliners and read the tail numbers. At high zoom levels
tracking the airliners is the hard part. You have to have a steady hand,
although the image stabilization really helps. It also has a quick-zoom
feature allowing you to zoom-out, locate and center something and snap back
quickly.

The article seems to indiate the p1000 doesn't have optical image
stabilization, but it does.

But the p1000 does NOT have ISO 819200 or heat haze correction. That sounds
pretty cool. With the p1000 you will see atmospheric shimmering pretty often.

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stephen82
Finally! CSI movies will make actual sense now with their once absurd zoom on
blurry pictures ^_^ hahaha!

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djtriptych
haha sadly no, not yet. Yes for live video but not for reviewing recorded
footage. That would require something closer to gigapixel video recording.

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lytfyre
There _are_ security systems that stream a lower bandwidth zoomed out stream
to clients reviewing footage, then sub in the full resolution version of the
region being viewed when you zoom in, as a bandwidth savings mechanism -
multiple 30Mpx camera feeds are impractical to stream around all the time.

Of course, they automatically substitute this when you zoom, they don't make
you click "enhance", that'd be terrible UX.

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tomatotomato37
What is the breakthrough here? It seems they just mated a security camera with
a telescope lens assembly, both of which we've already had for decades.

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umvi
I thought it was pretty cool. Almost everything is legos now; you can't claim
something isn't novel just because the components exist independently - if
they haven't been used in that combination I say it's still novel.

"What's the breakthrough here? It seems they just mated peanut butter with
jelly between two slices of bread, all of which we've already had for decades"

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purerandomness
> Almost everything is legos now

I strongly believe that this was always the case. There was never a
'breakthrough' invention.

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brokenmachine
The wheel?

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kuroikyu
Pretty much. After that it's all been wheels. Take the lenses, that's just a
wheel with a piece of glass on each side, easy. The camera? More wheels of
different sizes somewhat cleverly put together to capture light and store it -
boring. It's almost depressing really, kids nowadays don't know how to make
new things, just strap two things together with tape.

~~~
brokenmachine
The transistor is a wheel with differently-doped semiconductor areas?

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jordache
Not impressed. What is the (field of view) FOV at the 1km distance? Extremely
narrow I assume.. IF they can read 1km away with a wide FOV, then color me
impressed!

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buboard
People often discuss of surveillance in the context of companies they interact
with every day, but kinds of tools like this camera are typically used by
public services. What 's the discussion about privacy wrt to the data that
govt services have? Event GDPR glossed it over, giving these services
basically free reign.

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wil421
Georgia Power has recently started to sell license plate scanners to police
departments in my area. They use their utility poles to place small cameras
that scan each license plate and alert authorities when a stolen car is
spotted.

The city I used to live in did a trial. They recovered more stolen cars in the
first month they tried it than the whole year before. Here’s a press release
about the program in general[1].

[1][https://www.brookhavenga.gov/police/page/brookhaven-
police-c...](https://www.brookhavenga.gov/police/page/brookhaven-police-
cameras-score-nearly-100000-hits-month)

~~~
lph
Not one word in that press release about privacy safeguards.

The benefits are real, but without safeguards it will be abused: police
officers and, in this case, also power utility workers likely have full,
unaudited access to this data. That means they'll use it to stalk and harass
people, e.g. ex-girlfriends, in addition to legit uses.

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dsfyu404ed
I'm far more worried about the use case where the people in power decide to
robo-fine everyone for everything and do not get tarred and feathered in
response than I am about a few cops stalking their exes. The latter we
basically all agree is not ok (and there's existing well known channels for
punishing that kind of stuff when it happens). The former makes our society
worse and we have no good way of countering it until it becomes revolt worthy.

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magduf
Yeah, I like the idea of stolen cars being found very quickly, but there's a
huge potential for this to be abused and used for robo-fining, which would
truly be awful, and reminds me a lot of that 90s movie "Demolition Man".

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argd678
Bird watching is pretty popular too.

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w0mbat

      > With a focal length equivalent to 1000mm
    

Otherwise known as a meter.

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evgenyp
Focal lengths are, by convention, stated in millimeters even though most are
at least a centimeter.

