The Mysterium sensor and the sun...

E

Eirik Tyrihjel

Member
What happens if you frame the sun in a shot, will that burn the sensor?

Shooting 16/35 one doesn´t need to worry, how will this be with a cmos sensor? I guess I am thinking about shooting timelapse sequences of the sky and the sun moving, is it possible without destroying the sensor?
 
I've done this countless times with the DVX which is a 3CCD imager, and never seen damage, so I can only assume the same will hold true. Experts?
Peace,

-Harry
 
Eirik Tyrihjel said:
What happens if you frame the sun in a shot, will that burn the sensor? I guess I am thinking about shooting timelapse sequences of the sky and the sun moving, is it possible without destroying the sensor?
Click to expand...

No matter the "official" answer to this question, I'd rig a mechanical capping shutter to keep the sensor protected during the down time between frames if you want to point at the sun for any length of time.

I'm sure the camera will have some sort of contact port or other way to interface with your capping shutter. I've seen a few digicam sensor burns from this sort of time-lapse, it will make you cry if this happens to your $$$ Mysterium sensor.
 
I have seen this question a number of times over the years- I have never heard of a digital camera sensor getting burned by the sun, and if this happened to you I would be interested to hear more details. Normally you have the iris stopped down enough, and/or enough ND filters on, that the sensor isn't seeing a huge amount of light (if it was seeing a huge amount of light, the resulting image wouldn't look very good!). I did hear of a sensor getting burned by a too-powerful laser light show (direct hit in the lens).
 
In a time-lapse situation with the afternoon sun in frame for 2+ hours? Sure you can get damage. I saw a ruined Coolpix 990 sensor from one of these setups... a nice burn streak that resembled an old tube burn...

Why risk it?
 
We've had sensors damages by low powered lasers in discos, the iris does zero to turn them down and in anycase it's fully open usually in this situation.
Lenses and the sun are not a good mix, even EVFs can get fried.

Also not all ND filters are created equal, some do little to tone down IR. Probably for those used to big budget productions not an issue but if you're already strapped for cash buying cheap filters for a RED might be a costly mistake.
 
Thanks for adding the thing about laser light shows. I'll stay away from those gigs. I don't want no burned sensor. Could a pen laser light damage the sensor? I use one to aid in dolly focus pulls. Sometimes my 1st likes to get a little crazy with it.
 
Thanks for letting me know about the burned Coolpix 990. I wonder if it was relying on fast shutter instead of the lens iris, or only stopping down the iris when actually taking a picture- I can imagine either one could be trouble. I guess I was thinking about a continuously-active video camera which would need a continuously-stopped down shutter.

Even a low-power laser is actually much brighter than the sun, in terms of power into a given solid angle (mW per steradian).

I did measure some window tint film which was approximately neutral in the visible but almost perfectly transparent in the near-IR, so that wouldn't have been a good choice for shooting the sun (or for measuring with my Sekonic exposure meter, which is also sensitive to IR).
 
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