Picture Blocking Beer Cooler Keeps Your Face Out of Embarrassing Photos

cylonlover writes "It may sound like something dreamed up by a cheesy men's magazine as a joke, but apparently this is a real thing that actually exists. Ostensibly, the Norte Photoblocker is a functional beer cooler surrounded by four sensors that can detect the flashes from cameras or cell phones. If a flash goes off in the direction of the Photoblocker, it fires its own flash to flood the resulting photos with bright white and obscure anyone nearby. Now you can go about your usual business of cheating on your spouse, being an idiot around your boss, or drunkenly harassing fellow party-goers without worrying that some wildly irresponsible person will tag you in a photo and posts it online."

Comments

Absolutely flawless

[igreaterthanu]

Because there is no way to take a photo without a flash.

Re:Absolutely flawless

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure if you've ever actually been to a bar or real party (read: rager) but most of those environments are dark enough that without flash, your pictures are nearly useless when attempting to identify people.

Re:Absolutely flawless

[nurb432]

I guess video cameras don't exist either.

I must be old now; just don't be an idiot

[bryan1945]

If you're an adult, no problem going to a bar/party. Just don't strip to your undies and and poor beer on yourself. If you're married, don't go out to public places with the prostitute/mistress. Don't throw wild keggers in your backyard. If you're going to go through this much trouble not to have your picture taken, you may want to 1) rethink your priorities, or 2) do such things in relative privacy with people you trust.

If you're still young, go be an idiot. That's what college is for, generally.

Re:I must be old now; just don't be an idiot

[GodfatherofSoul]

Yeah, but let's be realistic. There's a lot of things we might do in jest among friends that could be detrimental in the future. People snapping pictures surreptitiously at parties or "spy shots" should be kicked out, like what happened to Phelps.

Re:I must be old now; just don't be an idiot

[Mousit]

You don't have to be an idiot for a picture to be a problem. After all, there was the somewhat recent case (even featured here on Slashdot, sorry I'm too lazy to dig up links) of the kindergarten teacher that was fired over a photo of her at a party, drinking from a cup that allegedly contained alcohol (gasp). She was of course legal, and was doing nothing unusual, merely smiling and drinking, but it was deemed "inappropriate" for her position, whatever the fuck that means.

There's a plethora of such cases. Or the numerous stories (again, featured on Slashdot too) of companies that troll social networking sites (or employ third parties to do so for them) to look up info on applicants and potential hires. Simply being at a party, drinking, is often frowned upon as the companies have outright stated when interviewed on this subject. There's also the issue of not everyone in your social circle may respect your wishes about no pictures (yes, I think that makes them jackasses), and this is especially true of parties where attendants may not all be your personal friends. Friends of friends, acquaintances, the types that are even more especially likely to not know and/or respect your picture wishes.

All of this, of course, are symptoms of a much larger blight on our society, but nonetheless, the point still stands: a picture of you drinking at a party does not necessarily have to show you being an idiot, to affect your life. Especially your professional life.

Re:I must be old now; just don't be an idiot

[russotto]

. Simply being at a party, drinking, is often frowned upon as the companies have outright stated when interviewed on this subject.

Personally I'm glad that these companies do this filtering, because it saves me the potential trouble of going to work for them, finding out they've got a stick up their corporate asses, and then having to look for another job and quit. However I understand other people might be in more need of a job, so I fully support finding anyone who hires and fires based on such things and photographing them in compromising positions.

Re:Nikon pro cameras with fast lenses work great!

[samkass]

Nikon super-ISO modes are pretty awesome. But I still gotta give props to Canon for always having a $99 F/1.8 55mm lens available for any camera they make. The difference between your typical F/3.5 zoom versus an F/1.8 prime is like night and day (no pun intended). Too many people overspend on the body and underspend on the lens.

Re:Nikon pro cameras with fast lenses work great!

[thegarbz]

Awesome, now we just need every 15 year old girl to pull $5k worth of camera equipment from her purse to take a semi blurry snap that ends up on facebook.

Let's face it. YOU are not a typical photographer.

Also lets face it if you used an 85mm f/1.4 in any semi decent bar on a friday night there'll be about 20 teenagers filling in the gap between you and the subject you're trying to photograph :-P

Re:Nikon pro cameras with fast lenses work great!

[eugene ts wong]

That isn't his point. The point is that people here know enough about technical options, whereas Joe Six Pack only knows how to do it with a flash, making the special cooler useful for most situations.

Re:Nikon pro cameras with fast lenses work great!

[JonySuede]

s100 for fun... D700 for WOW... it be moronic and socially clueless to bring a DSLR to a night club...

Re:Nikon pro cameras with fast lenses work great!

[neyla]

It doesn't, offcourse.

It probably works reasonably well *if* the photo is a flash-photo, and taken from precisely such a direction that the beer-cooler is directly between your face and the camera.

This might be the case for some fraction of embarassing photos, but certainly not 95%.

Re:Nikon pro cameras with fast lenses work great!

[mwvdlee]

As a developer I used to keep an old computer around specifically for a VC5 project I had to maintain; didn't want to polute my main machine with old the VC5.
Nowadays you just use a VM for this. I also tend to keep old software tools around even though I'm no longer using them for new projects.

I also do photography as a hobby and have some expensive equipment, on a normal day I carry around a mobile phone with a good camera (phone was chosen mainly based on camera quality). As I understand it, most professional photographers also keep good P&S cameras around and some of the most famous photo's in the world are shot on the cheapest camera's of the time.

Carpenters usually keep a cheap set of screwdrivers around as "multitools". They use the good screwdrivers to drive in screws and the cheap ones to poke, hammer, pry open, scratch and generally do things that will likely ruin the tool. There are more appropriate tools for each of these jobs, but a single disposable tool is a lot easier to carry around.

The highest quality tool might be the best tool but it isn't necessarily the most appropriate tool for every situation..