If I'm shooting outside on a regular day, does the natural sunlight have some sort of adverse affect on my cameral lense or CCD or whatever? For example, I'm shooting a subject like
I worry about this too, as I tend to take a lot of shots into the sun like this. But so far, the optics seem to have withstood the challenge. If you can add lenses/filters, most people recommend keeping a UV filter on there most of the time.
There's probably more hazard from the heat of leaving the camera in direct sunlight or in the car.
I get the impression that this may be like the problem with burning images into a computer monitor. I would almost think that prolonged periods of exposure may burn an image. Anyone want to test it out? (C: I guess a habit of recapping on lag times is going to have to become second nature.
I remember back when I bought my first video camera the manual said not to point it directly at the sun as it would damage the imager. I don't think this is such a problem any more but I have read reports of people damaging their equipment from taking pictures of the sun. Honestly I think you have more risk of damaging your eyes than the camera from doing this.
Kevin, that looks more like a speck of dust somewhere inside the camera to me :-/
I have heard reports of Fuji owners bending an internal plate by leaving the camera pointed at the sun, especially with the telephoto adapter attached. I don't think panning across the sun, or even pointing at it for a few seconds would do any damage though.
If you angle a magnifying glass towards the sun, whatever is behind it will start to burn after a while. I imagine a cameras lens system would have a similar effect, and a telephoto adapter will increase the effect.
Back when we had the eclipse last year I did some research on solar filtering. I work in a print shop where we use a high-density imagesetter film (around 4-4.5), meaning it passes about 1/10,000 the available light, and is particularly UV-opaque. I checked with someone at NASA who works in the field and he said that a density of 4.0 was sufficiently opaque for non-extended direct solar observation.
If anyone wants to experiment with this, check with your local print shop, or email me with a mailing address and I'll send you some -- we have about 3-4 pieces around 4x12 inches daily, which are otherwise "garbage."
If you angle a magnifying glass towards the sun, whatever is behind it will start to burn after a while. I imagine a cameras lens system would have a similar effect, and a telephoto adapter will increase the effect.
True enough. In taking this shot of a clear acrylic ball in full sun, I burned a hole in the piece of plain white paper I was using as a background.
