31 July 2008

Super camcorder?

Today, my colleagues were watching the following YouTube video about some sort of missile defense system:



And after that, one of them ran to me and had the following conversation with me:


    Keith: "Hey, Chris... do you know if there are any video cameras on the market that are designed to track mortar in the air"

    Me: "Huh? You mean the mortar that you drop into that barrel and then goes *kapow!* and shoots into the air?"

    Keith: "Yeah."

    Me: "Consumer video cameras?"

    Keith: "Yeah."

    Me: "..."

    Keith: "...?"

    Me: "You're asking me if a consumer video camera has a special mode settings like "daylight", "sports", "landscape", "snow" and then "MORTAR-TRACKING"?

    Keith: "Umm... yeah?"

    Me: "..."



I highly doubt that Canon has a camcorder in the market that fulfills such a niche. However, if they did have such a setting, it would probably look like this on the mode dial:


NO no no no... You're in APERTURE-PRIORITY mode, silly!


Of course, what I found funny was that my colleagues were more interested in how the hell they caught live artillery / mortar / rocket rounds on video, rather than the laser technology itself :)