Eclipse

Can you safely take a pic of the eclipse today without screwing up your camera with a polirizer on it

Polarizer reduces visible light, but does not reduce IR and UV light rays sufficiently. As a result, viewing thru the viewfinder is dangerous to your eyes. And the current wisdom, until proven otherwise, is to NOT aim the camera at the sun because of heat damage to the closed shutter, and to NOT aim the camera at the sun while in Live View mode due to heat damage to the sensor -- unless you have the proper solar filter in front of the lens.

This guy managed to get a shot with a 200mm lens on his 5DIII using a variable density filter (see reply #1)
http://www.canonrumors​.com/forum/index.php?t​opic=6643.0
He apparently did not look thru the viewfinder to aim, did not use Live View either, but aimed and shot trial shots by trial and error until the sun was suitably framed, and (one guesses) managed to do so without causing the metal shutter blades to be damaged

been there done that using a welders sheild. Can't say the results were any better than seeing it covered on television, kind of like going to the grandcanyon and seeing better work at the gift shop on the calenders, why bother? It was an interesting experiment but I fealt I had risked what was then a very expensive camera for a less than thrilling result.

Gonna be overcast and rainy here today anyway, I would be more concerned about water damage, or my own sanity if I went out and set up for something I am not going to see anyway