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Sunlight kill your equipments!

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Rental Camera Gear Destroyed by the Solar Eclipse of 2017
We recently had quite a spectacle in the United States, with a Solar Eclipse reaching totality throughout a large portion of the United States. Being that this was the first solar eclipse p...
lensrentals.com
Satoshi T

It is about the trouble of the camera rental shop at the solar eclipse time. I think this article will be useful to us as well. Even if the sensor is protected by a mechanical shutter, intense sunlight passes through the lens!

11 comments

craig Wow!

Kazzi This is what happenes, when you don't use ultra strong ND foil

Mikołaj If you've ever tried focusing sunlight using a magnifying glass to burn some stuff, it should be no surprise that the same thing will happen to your sensor if you aim it directly at the sun and let the light go through a bunch of lenses...

Satoshi T Let me ask very beginner question.
So why don't we burn our camera sensor even if the sun enters the screen without any ND filter when we took normal landscape shots?

Ian Prince To quote a long discussion here news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1... "Because the total/average brightness is low, the exposure ends up being much longer then at normal conditions, causing damage to the areas where the light is concentrated. Under normal conditions, the light will be less concentrated on certain spots, so even though there is much more light in total, the camera will choose an appropriate exposure that will prevent damage to the sensor"

Mikołaj Concentration is the key :)

Ian Prince Yes, and exposure time :)

Satoshi T I understood. For solar eclipse, conditions for 'seeing the Sun on the same position for a long time' are prepared.
Thanks @Ian and @Mikołaj , Normally I don't need any ND filter when drawing landscapes with sun as a back light :).

Tomek Zimnocho There's something else that can ruin equipment. I've read this few years ago lensrentals.com/blog/2013/05/h...

Ian Forbes Thanks for posting this Tomek. I had no idea that this dust is so fine it can penetrate weather sealing! As he said in the article i'd be more worried about what its doing inside the lungs of the people. If I see any going on I won't be bringing my gear anywhere near it. In fact i'd be more inclined to bring a hazmat suit! ;-)

Daniel Zaleski On a general note: I really like Roger Cicala's blog on lensrentals. His articles are really worth the time. Some should be mandatory lecture for serious amateurs (sic) - e.g. the series of articles focused on the dust in lenses or lens-body variation effects on AF accuracy etc. (puns intended)

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