Thread: How do you shoot the sun?

I've got a 300mm lens on a crop sensor 7D and a lighworks variND filter that goes to what looks like straight up opaque to me. I've sqeezed some good moon shots out of that lens, and I just ate some sugarcubes and have some jefferson airplane blasting.......

Am I going to kill my camera?



edit: after looking around some people think (or know) that you can catch the inside of your camera on fire. This should fun!

I would start with using a higher fstop (8 or higher) and also try keeping your shutter above 250th. Just try not to over expose your shots to much and you should not damage your camera. IMHO most pics of the sun look best as silhouettes, so under exposing is your friend.

do not use live view it will damage the camera
do not look through the viewfinder it will damage your eyes
use a UV filter
your varind filter gives 8 stops

Do that and your primary danger is burning your AF and AE sensor suite because they will be constantly exposed.

Use your lens cap.

Better yet use an old ass manual camera that can have the lens dialed down to f/16 all the time instead of just at exposure.

Originally Posted by Summit

Better yet use an old ass manual camera that can have the lens dialed down to f/16 all the time instead of just at exposure.

Okay so that little tidbit both informs and worries me.

Long story short, I'm not after stills......I want to shoot a timelapse of the the thing. Sounds like I shouldn't try it just with what I currently have.

I didn't know stopping up your camera only does so for exposures. Found out there are some purpose built films I can get to make a filter. I suppose the more baseline impotent I can make the light hitting the thing the better.....exposure taking or just sitting there.

Thanks for the responses.

Are you shooting a time lapse for motion picture?

Originally Posted by Summit

do not use live view it will damage the camera
do not look through the viewfinder it will damage your eyes
use a UV filter
your varind filter gives 8 stops

Do that and your primary danger is burning your AF and AE sensor suite because they will be constantly exposed.

Use your lens cap.

Better yet use an old ass manual camera that can have the lens dialed down to f/16 all the time instead of just at exposure.

would a manual lens work? I have a cheap zeiss that I change the f stop right on the lens

Originally Posted by rush1975

Are you shooting a time lapse for motion picture?

That would be the plan.

There's always a risk that you could damage your camera. One thing to remember is your sensor is only exposed for the duration of the photo, thats why I was recommending a higher aperture/shutter value. I my self have done a handfull of sunrise/sunset TL's with a DSLR (my personal eos 1d mkiin and also a 7d) and have experienced no problems with either. Using video cameras I have done hundreds of sunrise/sunset TL's most of the those have been with rental equipment that I am honestly not worrying about damaging, as of yet I have not damaged a sensor. (at least that i know of) Also with video camera's the sensor is constantly exposed giving much more opportunity for damage. In the end it's risk vs reward, all the shot's you have seen that make you want to shoot a time lapse those guys took the risk.

Here's a link to a really informative forum
http://timescapes.org/phpBB3/index.php

Your image sensor is only exposed during exposure, but your AF and AE sensors are fully exposed as long as the lens cap is off. The partial mirror acts like a 1-2 stop nd filter.

Originally Posted by grskier

would a manual lens work? I have a cheap zeiss that I change the f stop right on the lens

That @ f/16 or f/22 + the 8 stop ND + 1 or 2 UV filters might do the trick. That would give you 14 stops and UV.

Some brief research on this says that sun viewing requires ND14 for visual light.

I saw Hoya has a picture if of the sun with stacked filters that came out to 10.25 stops.

I'm sure there are some how to guides out there... try dpreview forums?

f/16 of f/22 is undesirable for timelapse with modern lenses due to flicker caused by minute differences in physical aperture size. So if you need that narrow of an aperture, either use an old manual lens or do the "set and rotate off the contacts" trick. But I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

Originally Posted by rush1975

There's always a risk that you could damage your camera. One thing to remember is your sensor is only exposed for the duration of the photo, thats why I was recommending a higher aperture/shutter value. I my self have done a handfull of sunrise/sunset TL's with a DSLR (my personal eos 1d mkiin and also a 7d) and have experienced no problems with either. Using video cameras I have done hundreds of sunrise/sunset TL's most of the those have been with rental equipment that I am honestly not worrying about damaging, as of yet I have not damaged a sensor. (at least that i know of) Also with video camera's the sensor is constantly exposed giving much more opportunity for damage. In the end it's risk vs reward, all the shot's you have seen that make you want to shoot a time lapse those guys took the risk.

Here's a link to a really informative forum
http://timescapes.org/phpBB3/index.php

Thanks for the info man. Just for the record though, I've shot a few hundred timelapses at this point between video cameras and dlsrs, timescapes was my bible a year or two ago, and I'm not talking about some pretty sunset shot.

I'm talking about this.



Smallest apperture and highest shutter speed are a given. Intervals adjusted accordingly. Short of standing in front of my lens, I'm looking at ways to do let in as little light as possible for this without a shooting through a solar telescope with shitty optics (because that's about the only level I can afford). I'm on the hunt for some solar gels at this point I think. That plus figuring out what I can get with the variable nd filter going. I think I'm going to at least see what the filter does on a direct sun shot on a cloudy day or at dawn or dusk just to get a feel.

Originally Posted by Lane Meyer

f/16 of f/22 is undesirable for timelapse with modern lenses due to flicker caused by minute differences in physical aperture size. So if you need that narrow of an aperture, either use an old manual lens or do the "set and rotate off the contacts" trick. But I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

I've never personally experienced that but I can also probably count the times I've used apertures up there on one hand. That does seem to be the conventional wisdom though. But this would also be one of those things that I would deem 'worth it' to geek out on in after effects.

That said, whatchoo got for manual zoom lenses?

Originally Posted by kidwoo

Thanks for the info man. Just for the record though, I've shot a few hundred timelapses at this point between video cameras and dlsrs, timescapes was my bible a year or two ago, and I'm not talking about some pretty sunset shot.

I'm talking about this.

Well thats another ball game. I've never tried a timelapse of just the sun, could see that possibly causing damage. I'm gonna go ahead and say just ignore my previous advice

Look into solar filters for astrophotography.

Some links:
http://www.hoyafilter.com/products/hoya/oef-07.html
http://www.thousandoaksoptical.com/solar.html
http://www.astro-physics.com/index.h...r_acc/kendrick
DIY: http://www.astro-physics.com/index.h...acc/astrosolar

Hey kidwoo, For this I use
Olympus E520
14-42mm & 40-150mm
0.7x wide converter.And 35mm camera is best for use of
Cannon.
But this is not sufficient for good photography, essential things are
choose camera of faster shutter speed to expose properly.
Use your own shadow or make shadow so you can capture photos easily.

Originally Posted by kidwoo

Psst. That's not a visible light image of the sun (looks like some sort of UV image). Visible light images of the sun look like this....



http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/c...useum/sun.html

Good luck with this project. Hope you don't fry your camera as that would suck.....

Or that bottom one just looks like an overexposed image.


Half the pics I've found look like that and I'm trying to figure out if that's the best I can do. If so, I don't give a damn about even trying this. I can shoot a ping pong ball if that's the case.

Bumping this up for the incoming eclipse.

Still looking for good filters to fit onto an slr lens. That hoya one looks like a winner (thanks fuzz!) My variable ND only goes to 1.8 so that's definitely better.

As far as damage goes, Ideally, I wouldn't be exposing the camera to anything unusual because it would be stopped down so much by the filters that I'm still bringing the shots into 'normal exposure'.........right?

Welding helmet glass.

not green enough

200mm lens on a 5D at f/32 (stopped down/DoF preview engaged), two reversed and opposed circ-polarizers, and 2 UV filters... safe to look through during an eclipse?

A few minutes ago.

Originally Posted by skiingislife

A few minutes ago.

Really cool -- any 100% crops? Seems some interesting stuff along the terminator? I'm down in Cancun, so no eclipse for me.

I'll post pics in a bit... keyboard is stuck on the laptop... wine apparently shorts out things.

I was able to safely view the sun.

Sent from my TI-89

Originally Posted by Summit

Sent from my TI-89

You have the TGR forums on a calculator!?!

Laptop keyboard is fried from the wine spill, but nothing will keep me away from teh internets!

Sent from my TI-89