Digital--the opposite of a caving problem...

[Teresa]

Does anyone know about shooting the sun with a digital camera?

Yesterday morning (too early!) I took a short sequence of sunrise photos with my FE-180. (Needed them for a story). Anyway, with no viewport, I wasn't looking at the sun...took them up to when the sun was about 5-6 degrees above the horizon. I shot through bare trees, for the most part, being cautious.

The last shot or two I had a light streak about a 1/16 wide from top to bottom on the LCD screen on the back of the camera. Photos turned out fine, with a little lens flare, as I expected. Camera claims top speed is 1/1000 of a second.

Since photo mags always rave about warm light at sunrise/sunset, and these are often contest winners, I was just wondering about the effects of the sun on the electronic guts of the machine. I'm not planning a career as a solar photog. The manual doesn't help, because while shooting into the sun is not recommended, neither are a whole lot of things which are patently absurd, and every photog beyond the mommy snapshootist does them all the time.

I'm not planning to take pictures beyond the 5% from the horizon stage.

[rcoomer]

I wouldn't worry about it.

Yes, excessive bright light and rays from the sun are bad for your camera's sensor, so don't open the shutter for 15 seconds and zoom it in directly on the sun. I think you would have to intentionally try to damage the sensor to find yourself in such a situation.

Otherwise, at fast shutter speeds, shooting sunrise / sunset, it shouldn't be a problem.

[hunter]

Check out this page:
[url]
http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=009ltO[/url]
It has a lot of information although nothing really definite. Pretty much everyone seems to agree that if your aren't using a serous telephoto lens you should be ok.

James