So you have a few stuck pixels... Could be worse
September 1, 2017 12:17 PM   Subscribe

Sometimes damage to a lens or camera body can be hard to detect. But then sometimes the damage is caused by the nuclear furnace of a star.
posted by selfnoise (16 comments total) 14 users marked this as a favorite
 
jebus! good thing I had a filter, which was actually a spare pair of eclipse glasses. they tell you not to do that and to use a proper camera filter sheet, but that's only if you have a tripod set up with your camera lens continuously pointing at the sun.

I took pictures once every 15 minutes or so, with my point and shoot Sony MK III. I actually had a filter sheet for it, but it was hard to keep on lens due to the retracting when you zoom in and out, and also it made the sun looks white. The glasses were easier to deal with once you cut it in half. I think my pics turned out alright!
posted by numaner at 12:24 PM on September 1, 2017 [2 favorites]


I thought this was going to be about accidental cosmic ray damage to sensors. But no, this is ... far more severe. Lenses and sensors are fragile and people are idiots, I guess.
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:25 PM on September 1, 2017


I wonder if the rental company double or tripled the deposit required to rent during that time frame.. Wow..
posted by k5.user at 12:56 PM on September 1, 2017


Good thing I was using my crappy mirror lens. Can't melt aperture blades, if you don't have any. *taps head*

also the 22 stop solar filter helped
posted by ckape at 1:00 PM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


In case anybody is curious that 600 mm lens isn't exactly cheap. I'm surprised anyone who rented that kind of big glass didn't bother to protect it better.
posted by TedW at 1:00 PM on September 1, 2017 [2 favorites]


A point of order: the sun is not a nuclear furnace, but is a miasma of incandescent plasma.
posted by TheNewWazoo at 1:07 PM on September 1, 2017 [5 favorites]


My colander did just fine. Came through it like the champ it is. The eclipse didn't even burn the sidewalk.
posted by Oyéah at 1:14 PM on September 1, 2017 [8 favorites]


It can be a nuclear furnace of incandescent plasma, TheNewWazoo.
posted by a car full of lions at 1:19 PM on September 1, 2017 [2 favorites]


I wonder if the rental company double or tripled the deposit required to rent during that time frame.. Wow..

Apparently under most circumstances they don't charge any deposit at all. They've been doing this a long time, so I guess they don't generally have too much trouble collecting fees for late or damaged lenses.
posted by aubilenon at 1:27 PM on September 1, 2017


The issue with that 600mm lens is it uses an internal drop-in filter which is after the aperture blades. So, it looks like the renter was using a solar filter with the lens, it's just an issue of the design (and being unfamiliar with the lens). I'm not sure if the really big lenses like that even have filter thread on the front, and I certainly can't find information about what size they would be.
posted by ckape at 1:28 PM on September 1, 2017 [2 favorites]


Apparently under most circumstances they don't charge any deposit at all. They've been doing this a long time, so I guess they don't generally have too much trouble collecting fees for late or damaged lenses.

That and they probably insure all of their rental gear internally anyway. They rent a ton of lenses, cameras and gear all year round and have a pretty massive inventory. They deal with damaged gear all the time.

Also, this thread is making me nervous, and reminding me that I actually pointed my precious X100 at the sun briefly during the eclipse. I should be fine because it was so brief and I'm pretty sure the aperture and leaf shutter on the X100 is all metal, it's a mirrorless and I almost always have a UV skylight filter in place. And the exposure was a quick handheld stopped down high aperture shot, not a locked down tripod exposure.

Actually, I'm going to do a dead pixel finding, high iso lenscap-on long exposure right now. I'm just realizing I haven't done any properly long exposures since the day of the eclipse.
posted by loquacious at 1:56 PM on September 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


And I appear to be good. I can't take off the lens and look at the sensor since it's a fixed compact viewfinder style camera, but I don't appear to have any new noisy/dead pixels even at the boosted 128,000 ISO. Whew.

I was actually briefly worried because I should know better than to aim any optics at all at the sun, eclipse or no, especially something as valuable to me as my beautiful little X100, and the fact I didn't even think about it until I saw this Lens Rentals post earlier on my feeds is a total brain fart and slip up.
posted by loquacious at 2:02 PM on September 1, 2017


Lensrentals seems pretty lax about deposits. BorrowLenses will require proof of third-party photographer's insurance or charge a deposit on really big ticket rentals like that 600mm.

It is pretty amazing to me though that things seem to work out just fine with them shipping cheaper stuff (and I mean up to a couple thousand dollars worth of gear) out to rent without more anti-fraud measures.
posted by zachlipton at 3:27 PM on September 1, 2017


So you're saying I"m just lucky that I didn't ruin my $10 monocular or somewhat more expensive Meade telescope and CCD eyepiece with a jury-rigged cardboard lens cover/disposable eclipse glasses "filter?"
posted by ob1quixote at 7:03 PM on September 1, 2017


The issue with that 600mm lens is it uses an internal drop-in filter which is after the aperture blades. So, it looks like the renter was using a solar filter with the lens, it's just an issue of the design (and being unfamiliar with the lens). I'm not sure if the really big lenses like that even have filter thread on the front, and I certainly can't find information about what size they would be.

I am confused about why they would even make a drop-in solar filter, for reasons which the post makes clear. I don't think the 600 has filter threads either, but the Canon website says its max diameter is 168 mm, so something like this telescope filter should work.
posted by TedW at 12:51 PM on September 2, 2017


I'm guessing it was a screw-in 52mm solar filter inside a drop-in adapter. Looks like there's at least one superzoom camera with that size filter, so it's not a completely absurd size to offer a solar filter in.
posted by ckape at 4:30 PM on September 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


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