Lightning
 

The recent thunderstorms set me thinking. Years ago there was a close storm when suddenly I noticed blue static electricity running all over our cordless phone (which was on at the mains) after which the phone was dead - fried! Now the question is are digital cameras vulnerable to such conditions if they are turned on?

I hope not miketoll. But about 10 years ago our telephone line was hit it traveled along the line, we had the cordless phones plugged in to the mains it jumped from the telephone line to the electrics and blew everything out in the house 6 television and 4 Video recorders because my daughters and parents who where living with us all had there own sets. As to it affecting digital camera's if it is being used at the time and causing static I hate to think. Recently I I believe someone in the midlands was hit while using her mobile, it was in the papers. I not sure whether she survived.

The Power of Electricity should never be under estimated. On a somber note I recall seeing in a journal an image from a security camera the instant somebody was vaporised whilst in a Very High Voltage sub-station.

As Christine has stated most of the time lightning stikes cause damage in the home by traveling along overhead Power and telephone lines especially in country districts. There are protectors on these lines to try and limit lightning strike damage.

How well a piece of electronic equipment survives a lightning strike or High static volages depends on it's design. In some cases this is of prime concern or little or no thought is given to the matter. For example the Aircraft electronics must survive if a plane is hit by lightning. There are places which test an aircraft under such conditions.

If a piece of equipment gets a direct hit it makes no difference if the equipment is on or off. If the item has a metal case this will form a Faraday Cage and provide protection by screening the circuits. To illustrate this I was in a large building that that took a direct hit. I am glad that the dozen or so lightning conductor did there job. My collegue had his back 1 foot away from the window facing into the room. I was facing him and I saw the blue static running down the window. I called out to be aware but he had no idea what had just happened.

I think you would be very unlucky if a camera was damage by a nearby strike.

In my previous job I had worked on countless bits of domestic equipment damage by lightning. I think the worst case was where lightning had hit the TV ariel. It burnt out the Down lead, Vaporised the printed circuit on 2 of the boards, blew the On-off switch apart, Blew up the main power socket and distroyed the consumer unit. The TV was OFF. The woman was in the room at the time and the experience caused her to have a nervous breakdown. She was on pills to calm her nerves and would not go back into the living room for ages.

My PC and some other electrics are connected to a 6 gang plug with a built-in surge protector. I only paid a few pounds more for one with surge protection.

I don't think a mobile phone would be at risk if indoors, and not connected to the charger.

Thanks for your replies, some sobering stories there! When our cordless phone was burnt out no part of our property was struck or any cables, it just seemed to be the general level of static in the air at the time of the close proximity of the storm being attracted to a device with presumably an electrical field of its own (as you can tell I know little about electricity). I have twice been less than 100yards from a strike when out in a storm and I am not going to be out in the open taking photos with the camera on a metal or carbon fibre tripod in a thunder storm!

Don't forget that lightning sometime travels upwards, it's not always down from the clouds. It tends to flash to the highest point that why it pays not to stand under a tree or be that highest point yourself. (lay flat on the ground).

I suspect your phone was an old cheap design ( made for less than a pound ) and imported from the far East. Modern telecom components tend to be designed to withstand 2KV static charges.

Our lightening strike melted 50yds of telephone cable before switching to the mains electric. None of the TV's were switched on at wall sockets they were switched off I am always frightened of plugs overheating so habit makes me switch them off. The Telephone engineer was amazed at the amount of damage to the phone line in the street. It turned out that the modern phone wall sockets don't have lightening conductors in. We where told later, we should have got them to pay up not the insurance.

I had a very frightening experience a couple of years ago when on the Archery field, we were just collecting our arrows out of the target when there was a smell of sulphur and all the ladies hair stood on end, then there was a bang as the lightening struck a pylon with a small generator at the bottom this was about 50yds away from where we were stood, umbrellas where dropped immediately some ladies through themselves on the floor and lay flat, sometimes one of the judges sits within about 10ft of the generator luckily not that day. A few minutes earlier there would have been about 200 Archers shooting arrows with metal stabilizers pointing in the air shooting. The competition was abandoned there and then. I nearly **** myself with fright. Not a pleasant experience.

It was one of the early analogue ones.