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The Solar Eclipse of 2017 Destroyed Lots of Rental Camera Gear (petapixel.com)
Despite numerous warnings sent out to renters, a number of LensRental's camera equipment came back damaged and destroyed from the solar eclipse of 2017. PetaPixel provides pictures in a report that shows some of the damage. One photo, for example, "shows a Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 lens that had its aperture blades partially melted by the sun during the eclipse," while another shows a Canon 7D Mark II shutter being burned so bad that "the heat went past it and damaged the sensor behind it as well." LensRentals, one of the leading camera rental companies, writes about the destruction in a blog post on their website: The most common problem we've encountered with damage done by the eclipse was sensors being destroyed by the heat. We warned everyone in a blog post to buy a solar filter for your lens, and also sent out mass emails and fliers explaining what you need to adequately protect the equipment. But not everyone follows the rules, and as a result, we have quite a few destroyed sensors. To my personal surprise, this damage was far more visually apparent than I even expected, and the photos below really make it visible.
The images above are likely created because people were shooting in Live View mode, allowing them to compose the image using the back of their screen, instead of risking damage to their eyes by looking through the viewfinder. However, those who didn't use live view (and hopefully guess and checked instead of staring through the viewfinder), were more likely to face damage to their camera's mirror. While this damage was far rarer, we did get one particular camera with a damaged mirror box caused by the sun.
The images above are likely created because people were shooting in Live View mode, allowing them to compose the image using the back of their screen, instead of risking damage to their eyes by looking through the viewfinder. However, those who didn't use live view (and hopefully guess and checked instead of staring through the viewfinder), were more likely to face damage to their camera's mirror. While this damage was far rarer, we did get one particular camera with a damaged mirror box caused by the sun.
This is an incredibly good example of what happens to your EYES if you look up at the eclipse without protection.
That $11.5K lens, though. OUCH.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Dumb Americans used their eyes and/or cameras to view the eclipse.
Smart Americans used certified eclipse glasses and/or rental cameras to view the eclipse.
I need someone to blame about my life choices.
At least according to the president who has rose colored glasses that protected his vision.
This message was not sent from an iPhone because Peter Sellers really was a deviated prevert without a dime for the call
From TFA:
"Thankfully, there were relatively few items that were returned to LensRentals with this type of damage"
Is it even possible to get a decent (zoomed)picture without using a solar filter? Even if the shutter/sensor didn't get damaged?
Do you really expect them to follow instructions? They should have made the blog post into a political propaganda piece. Something like, "If you wreck the camera, we will kill all Nazis"
It's standard confirmation that the world is full of idiots. I hope these fucktards are make to pay the full cost and more of the equipment they've destroyed through carelessness.
First of all, this whole mania about not looking at the sun ever is absurd. People do it all the time between eclipses with no lasting damage.
Secondly, this is NOT an example of what happens to your eyes looking at the sun, unless you are looking at the sun through several layered magnifying glasses - which is essentially what a telephoto lens is.
Now what you don't want to do is stare at it for longer than a second or so, but brief glances are OK. However you'll not be able to see a partial eclipse that way, the rest of the sun is too bright - so you really need glasses just to see anything.
Similarly for camera gear, if you pre-focus, quickly move the camera to the sun, shoot, then turn it away - there's no lasting camera damage. However what you really REALLY do not want to do is to be looking through an optical viewfinder when that happens, there even a second can hurt your eyes. But live view with an LCD viewfinder is fine.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Interesting.
I am an avid photographer myself and I wouldn't dream of these kind of stupidities.
Yet I can very much understand technically challenged people not understanding the consequences of their decisions.
On the other hand, they did understand there was a need for specialist equipment that even on rent won't be cheap, and now they are told their insurance doesn't cover it.
At the end of the blog with scary pictures Zach Sutton writes he was surprise how few equipment was actually damaged yet he also writes this is only a small sample.
So now I get really interested to know what percentage came back damaged.
Then we can use that number to extrapolate how many personal equipment was burnt.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Right. Why did people take pictures of it at all? If you want pictures, go to a space/astronomy/NASA site after the eclipse and download to your heart's content.
It is the same mentality as those who film a sporting event with their smartphone. Why? It will be broadcast, in better definition and commentary, and they can watch the re-broadcast when they get home.
Monkey see monkey do.
I come here for the love
...this one got a quite lasting image of the sun!
No. No it did not. All of that rental equipment showed up in the users' hands in boxes or cases. The USERS are the people who destroyed the equipment. It's like saying the brick is what destroyed the chef's knife that someone was using to try to cut it in half. Why does any of that matter? Because usage like that just drip-drip-drip reinforces the notion that people aren't responsible for their own actions, and that particularly cancerous concept spreads into all sorts of dangerous places.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You must be fun in general...
Why do I need to use a computer to see the sun again? It's the same mentality as a bunch of nerds bitching about the news.
Monkey pee, monkey poo. That's about all you added to this fucking conversation.
It is exactly an example of what happens to your eyes when looking at the sun.
It isn't the size of the lens which matters, it's the f-ratio. The ratio of the lens aperture (diameter) to the focal length. While a larger diameter collects more light, a longer focal length focuses that light into a larger image. So regardless of lens size, if they have the same f-ratio then the intensity of the light at the focal plane is the same when pointed at the same light source.
The human eye has a f-ratio of about f/2.1 (night-adapted) to f/8.3 (daylight). While the 600mm telephoto gathers a lot more light than your eye, it also focuses the light into a much larger image of the sun, so the energy per mm^2 of sensor isn't as high as you'd think given the large lens diameter. F-ratio goes as the diameter of the lens, while amount of light gathered goes as the area of the lens, or diameter^2. So comparing the 600mm f/4.0 telephoto to your eye at f/8.0, the telephoto's light has only 4x as much energy per mm^2 of sensor as per mm^2 of retina. Consequently, it would only take 4x as long to cause similar damage to your eye than it would take with the 600mm telephoto. Probably a lot less time since biology tends to be much more sensitive to temperature than metal and silicon circuitry.
Wow. You must be fun at parties.
And also: I pity your spouse. And your children. But I doubt you have either of those, thankfully.
my mother told me not to stare at the sun
The pus, produced by the worms, eating the rabbits carcass, floating in the monkey pee, is all you bothered to add. Fuckwad.
So I shit into a pile of shit... sue me.
Cuz this isn't covered by the insurance!
Although an interesting thought experiment about the light collected by an eye vs a lens, you are not factoring in a massive difference - the eye is filled with fluid, while the chamber of a camera is not.
That keeps the temperature regulated, in a way a camera simply does not do...
In fact if you read about HOW eyes are actually damaged by looking at the sun without magnifying elements for too long, heat is not a factor at all - so how can it possibly compare to the damage done by a camera lens which is entirely heat related? It is in fact the result of an internal chemical reaction, totally different...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Not only brighter but how the obstruction makes more light reach the viewer?
It doesnt, but while you are preparing the shot, you are pointing at the full sun (with long telephotos as seen fromo the pictures) when it is really high in the sky for quite a lot of time.
I used a Minolta X-9 film camera with a Tokina 50mm f8 RMC Schmidt-Cassegrain lens mounting a solar filter on the front. In between shots I put a box over the lens to shade it to prevent the camera and lens from overheating. I thought it was a pretty obvious thing to do. Apparently it wasn't as obvious others. https://www.flickr.com/photos/...
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
The problem during an eclipse is that the amount of sunlight hitting your retina is still up in the range where it can cause damage, but not in the range where you'll notice immediately.
Oh really - did you try this during an actual eclipse?
Because even up to 99% obscured, there was still too much light to look at the sun directly without wanting to look away again right away. The light took on an eerie quality to be sure, but was not substantially dimmed until the actual full eclipse. Images I took about a second after the total eclipse ended showed a dark sky but still a massively bright sun, and the end of the total eclipse was about the same apparent speed as someone putting a dimmer up to full brightness over the course of a second or two.
There is no danger from the sun "appearing safe to look at" because at no time did it appear safe to look at until it actually was.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just shooting the sky with a 20mm lens will get you probably several hundred pixels of sun.
That Panasonic 20mm lens has a 57 degree angle of view, while the sun and moon are about .5 degrees each. That means the sun is less than 1% of the size of the image. That's probably 40 pixels in diameter for a high-res sensor. In other words, it's like taking a photo with the sun in it.
In order to actually melt something like that by aiming it at the sun, you'd have to actually have the lens attached to something like a telescope.
I have to guess that the people who actually managed to damage the equipment were those who abused it, not those who just took a few photos of the sun.
dom
I was considering photographing the eclipse because I thought the process could be fun and interesting to learn about and do. I didn't expect my photos to be any better than a professional's--in fact, I expected them to be worse. I wound up not doing it because the company I ordered the solar filter from ran out before they fulfilled my order.
1. Yes, LensRentals rents out cameras and lenses. For special one-time needs, it's better to spend $400 to rent a super-duper lens for a week than to buy it for $4000. Also, some people will rent equipment prior to buying it, to cover the possibility that the equipment isn't satisfactory for their purposes.
2. The experience of an eclipse differs from sunset or cloudy overcast. While in the partial phase, it gets dark while shadows are still distinct. It's a rare event, and the combination of rarity and the peculiar sensations do make it interesting.
Some people overreact, and I understand your cynicism. Nonetheless, an eclipse is unusual and a bit fun; it's a memorable event that most people are pleased to have experienced.
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From 8/21/2017 solar eclipse? ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
These are the same fuckwits who take pictures of their FUCKING FOOD and their dogs wearing tiny sweaters or moose antlers or little red noses, which I'm sure those animals HATE and sharing them with their so-called "friends," who are also morons, evidently because they don't immediately unfriend the jackasses who do this shit, and move on with their lives.
So I prevented harm to myself and my precious cameras by NOT pointing them at or near a giant ball of fire in the sky.
So, erm, what do you take photographs of? Or do you prevent harm to your precious cameras by keeping them safely in a closed, locked box at the bottom of wardrobe in the bricked off spare room in the basement of your secret bunker?
A recent article in Chemical and Engineering News discussed just this. The damage comes from over-production of all-trans retinal. Normally, 11-cis retinal is converted to all-trans, which is then converted to retinol, and back, eventually, to 11-cis retinal. It is along this pathway that an signal is generated that says "I got light". Too much light results in an over-abundance of all-trans retinal, which in the presence of yet more light absorbs additional light to eventually produce an excited triplet state. This then interacts with oxygen creating reactive oxygen species that then interact with lipids in the cell, damaging them, and eventually leading to cell damage.
Also, calculations indicate that the local temperature increase caused by directly viewing the sun is only about two degrees, not enough to cause physiological damage.
You didn't cancel your order, did you? You can still use the solar filter during all the rest of the time that's not an eclipse and photograph sunspots or other transits. Plus, you'll have it for the next eclipse.
Looks like there will be a Venus transit in December of this year.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
They cancelled it when they couldn't fulfill it. I'm still thinking about ordering one, but I thought I'd wait a while for restocking to happen.
I guess you never travel at all, since you can just see photos of other cities/countries online.
It seems absurd to give any credit to Petapixel - this report was on LensRentals' site first, and the summary links to the blog - looks like someone just wanted to give Petapixel some free advertising...
My favourite is the thousands of camera flashes you see going off at stadium sports events, because your flash works over 50-100 feet and doesn't just give you an underexposed photo with a really nice shot of the back of someone's head in the foreground.
Actually, using a flash at sporting events, concerts, and other brightly illuminated events isn't a bad strategy for point-and-shoot cameras. The fact that the flash doesn't illuminate the subject is irrelevant; the flash sync speed of the shutter is just about what you want for proper exposure anyway.
I think the analogy would be to not to take pictures while on vacation. Not not going on the vacation.
Extremely high quality photographic equipment is so cheap to outright buy today-- how can there possibly be a rental business for it? Are these redcams or better?
Gonna call bullshit on that one. I can find a dozen articles that will confirm you should turn your flash off (and anything that is making aperture/exposure decisions based on the flash is going to be underexposed). Feel free to post one article to the contrary.
I don't know if this is the case, but if internet articles on photography are as accurate as internet articles on exercise science you could have very well found a dozen articles that simultaneously all alike and all wrong.
(FWIW I'm inclined to agree with you that the flash is useless, but I'm just saying the internet is sometimes completely wrong about specific subjects.)
You had me pretty excited there for a minute. Your Venus transit date is off by 100 years. The next one is Dec. 2117.
I think it's a Mercury transit, but something is coming up.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Shot tons of photos with OnePlus, nothing bad happened.
You can see sunrise AND sunset? So your basement has windows to the east AND west?
Man, that's what I call living!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Some people never listen. All you can do is educate. After that it up to them to listen. Idiots everywhere.
Sounds like it's news for nerds to me. Sorry it's not a SJW post like you'd prefer.
...they maybe they should do a story on rental vehicles too.
tl;dnr: being a fuckwit can be expensive.
Why take pictures of anything in nature? Someone already had a pretty good shot of it eh?
As a professional photographer, I agree. Flash is useless at sporting events and performances. Hell, it's mostly useless everywhere else. Anything you could possibly need it for can be corrected in post if you shoot in a RAW format.
I can't tell you how many people I've taken aside at such events and shown them (because they don't know) how to turn off the flash on the $2000 camera that they only play with for an hour every 6 months.
The reaction is always "WOW, that DOES look a lot better!"
There were some old simple cameras with no metering where that was true. My old Instamatic from the 1960s was an example; it used a different (longer) shutter speed if the flash was active. That seems counterintuitive now, but it was necessary for flash bulbs because they did not emit all their light nearly instantaneously like a Xenon flash tube does.
(Cameras with focal plane shutters, like SLRs have (digital or not), still need a relatively slow shutter speed for flash. The reason is that at higher speeds (above 1/90 to 1/250 second, depending on your camera model) there is no moment when the entire picture is exposed at once, and therefore no optimal moment to fire the Xenon flash. A focal plane shutter uses a slit that moves across the film plane. The speed of movement of the slit is always the same; what changes if you switch shutter speed is the amount of time between the travel of the leading and trailing curtains.)
Every digital camera I have ever seen, aside from ultra-cheap disposable ones, incorporates some form of electronic metering. Flash won't help you there. The likely result of using flash is that something in the foreground will get illuminated by it and cause the metering system to decide the picture has had enough exposure, and the distant scene that you're actually interested in is underexposed. Fancier cameras that figure out which part of the picture you are interested in will do better, at least if they guess the point of interest correctly. REALLY fancy ones look at your eyes to see what you are looking at in the viewfinder.
I used to use this technique on point and shoot film cameras to keep from overexposing bright subjects on a dark background when everything was outside the flash's effective range. Even the cheapest digital cameras should be capable of some sort of proper metering without resorting to that trick though. And at sporting events, it is almost guaranteed to fail if any of the nearby seating (which is within the flash's effective range) is in frame. I get a good laugh out of looking at video of events frame by frame to see the flash cones lighting up a few rows of seats and nothing else. Occasionally you see someone with a big flash that nearly makes it past the seating area. They must have some great shots of the backs of people's heads...
In addition to TomH123's comment, another difference is that a lot of the photos people take on vacation are of themselves. I don't think people were renting cameras to take selfies of themselves with the eclipse.
Although a Google search shows some hits. And quite a few people saying not to do it. Interesting.
"Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." -Indiana Jones
Hankwang -- holyshit! You looked at the sun through binoculars!? As the primary test of your conjecture with yourself as the subject? Man - you may be one badass honkey mofo indeed. When I first turned on my Transcranial Current Device the lights flickered. Then I realized that wasn't the lights. Self experimentation is best handled by those of us with the mind and the balls to handle it. Thanks for the data.
more importantly -- What is the backstory to this experiment?
This really might fall in the "You gotta share this one man!" category.
Marcus
justhinkit -- Your point is very logical, efficient and practical. My own behavior is based on your exact points as I care about utility (eat to live) so I can pursue things greater (than talking about gastronomy or my phone-video of a noteworthy event.)
I posit however that the Monkey SeeDo is valuable to humans as a ritual. The value of the Monkey SeeDo is that hominids participating is that they possess a memetic locus around which to establish communication, which is ultimately about distributing resources (including status).
People who think in the terms shared by you and I (in this certain case) don't find value in such rituals.
"Nice weather we're having, Marcus." said Johnny
"I don't talk about the weather unless I'm on a motorcycle or flying an aircraft."
Wow. Now i know why some people think Marcus is a strange asshole,thought Johnny.
Yeah...sure I DO know that humans utilize 'Weather Observation' as a communications handshake protocol. But hey -- Johnny is likely right that I am an asshole.