I took this one today:
I always shoot with white balance set to “auto” because I shoot RAW. This photo was changed to “tungsten” in Photoshop and produced a very interesting result – the lake was changed to dark blue and the sun colors stayed intact. By the way, the dark black area in the middle is the Cherry Creek Reservoir dam.
A suggestion to DSLR newbies – never shoot directly at the sun like above. First, you could get blind or get your eyes damaged (don’t forget Galileo). Second, you could damage the sensor of your DSLR very easily. If you still want to do it, stop down your lens (I shot the above at f/16 and f/22) and shoot in live view mode with a tripod. If you do not have live view, point at the location you want to shoot without looking into the viewfinder and make a couple of shots. If you missed it, you will see the result in your LCD right away – just keep on trying. Your eyes are more important than a stupid picture!
About Nasim Mansurov
Hi Nasim,
Do you have any idea what kind of exposure is needed to be concerned?
A few times I have looked through my d90 viewfinder directly at the sun to frame a shot, somewhere inside of 30 seconds I guess. Most recently with a 50mm lens and the sun was quite strong (enough to not be able to view it directly with the naked eye. Through the viewfinder it was quite strong but I just looked at other items in the frame through the viewfinder rather then directly onto the sun.
I never thought much about it before but now after a bit of reading I wonder if I might have caused something from doing this. There is a lot of varied opinion on how dangerous this is and what length of exposure time is considered dangerous, do you have any other comment on this for me?
Thanks