I'm not sure if that was a typo or a joke; the most powerful laser I've seen in operation was a 15W argon unit (very impressive, I assure you!), and the most powerful in the world are MW-class chemical lasers (for military purposes, naturally). While a class IIIa pointer may not seem "powerful" by those standards, compare it to other things likely to be shined in one's camera or eyes; the sun delivers roughly 1kW/m^2, and a laser beam with only a couple mm^2 aperture and 5mW power easily exceeds that.[/QUOTE]

no, thats not a joke, and you are wrong, the most powerfull lasers on the world actually exceed 1petaWatt and are not used for military purpose at all. i regularly work on a 100terraWatt laser. dont forget, its not only about fluency, its also about intensity, a nuclear power plant delivers megaWatts,but over a year or so, standard high power lasers do that in femto seconds (10to the negative 15).

amd if someone uses a laser of class 2 or higher to fovus it on the camers cmos sensor, he deseerves it.