When is it ok to shoot the sun?

S

Somewhereinthewoods

Active member
I'm about to do a short about solar energy. I will be using by HVX200 and a Canon 60D with a Tokina 11-16mm. I would like to make time-lapses but am afraid of hurting the cameras by aiming at the sun. Please advise.
 
Camera lenses aren't like viewfinders, where the sun can damage the LCD inside if it's aimed wrong. If you're shooting the sun, the iris will likely be at a position that blocks almost all of the rays from hitting the sensor(s), or you'll have ND filters doing the same thing.

I would just advise against using the HVX since it uses CCD's, which are prone to vertical smearing. You can reduce it by lowering the shutter speed, but I would just use the 60D if that's possible.
 
Moseph said:
I would just advise against using the HVX since it uses CCD's, which are prone to vertical smearing. You can reduce it by lowering the shutter speed, but I would just use the 60D if that's possible.
Click to expand...

Some CCD's do have vertical smear from very bright specular sources.... but I've shot 1,000 timelapse sunsets with HVX200's and HPX170's and never had a problem.

Regarding if it will damage over time or to what extent you would need to do so, I have no idea.
 
I've heard you shouldn't shoot the sun with a DSLR as it might damage the sensor. I'm not sure if it's true or not. Perhaps you can use a polarizer.
 
I've seen multiple videos of lasers ruining them, but the exposure was set for the room (very dark shows), not for a laser to be pointed at the camera and not blown out. I'd guess that the sun could damage the sensor in video mode if the iris is open enough, but if you have it set so that it's not immensely blown out, I doubt any damage would occur.

That said, an iris setting of such would probably eliminate any vertical smearing on the HVX now that I think about it, as Ryan said. No record time limit either, with the 60D you'd probably have to use it in photo mode with an intervalometer. On the HVX, you could just use the framerate hack to get down to 2FPS and quickly speed it up in your editing software if necessary as opposed to importing hundreds of still images.

Not sure why I didn't think of those things first.
 
jchan0806 said:
I've heard you shouldn't shoot the sun with a DSLR as it might damage the sensor. I'm not sure if it's true or not. Perhaps you can use a polarizer.
Click to expand...

Depends on the time of day. I would not shoot at noon, in fact, I would not shoot directly into the sun, unless it is a 'brief' shot... even then without a buch of ND filters. The 'only' time would be when this sun stands about 2 or 3 fingers off the horizon, and at that point, the intensity is cut way down due to more air filtering the light.

For 'scientific work', while I don't know what the OP is doing, I would use a telescope, and project the sun image, then shoot that projection, or, back to major ND filtering... For example to 'see' sunspots, one needs to do something like that anyway...

As it is the sun (and the moon as well) subtend about 1/2 degree, and so one needs a very long lens to get the image to any 'reasonable' size, other than a blank, nearly point source, disk.

In short, if I can't look directly at the sun, I would not point my camera at the sun. Back in the olden days, when there was an actual physical shutter, perhaps at high shutter speed, one could get away with it. And perhaps that works for DSLR's that have mirrors etc. in front of the sensor. But for 'electronic' shuttered devices, the sensor is directly exposed, even if the camera is not recording.

It may not be as sensitive as burning a Vidicon tube... I just don't want to find out on my camera...
 
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