Eye safety when shooting the sun

Hi everyone,

I was curious to know if anyone does any sort of precautions when photographing the sun. Obviously, your not supposed to look directly at the sun with your bare eyes, does anyone have any technique when photographing it? Is it as dangerous to look at the sun through a wide-angle lens as it is to look at it with your bare eyes? Thanks.

-Jon

I was kind of wondering about this too. I would never shoot the sky without a CPL on though, and that seems to help a lot.

Your manual tells you never to point the camera at the sun. The light can melt the shutter curtains. On the other hand, I have shot sunrises and sunsets with no filters and using a Tokina 12-24 on both a 40D, MkIIN and now a Mk3. The sun is weak when close to the horizon, so no damage.

Now, if you want to shoot sunspots, your supposed to set the scope up, aim at the sun, then move it around by trial and error, while holding a white piece of paper near the focal length of the small end till you see the disk of the sun. Then fine focus it. Take pictures of whats on the paper.

If it is deterimental I would have been blind by now..

Liveview will save your eyeballs at least.

A telephoto is obviously worse for cooking your retina, but I'm not sure that makes wides ok. Anyway I've done it a few times (shot with the sun in frame) but not without GNDs at least, otherwise everything else is too dark anyway.