If you’re fortunate enough to be in North America during today’s eclipse we hope you’re planning to shoot the eclipse with an appropriate filter. If you don’t know why you need a solar filter, watch the horrifying video below.
The selfless folks at Everything Photography Store sacrificed a silver Canon Rebel XT (EOS 350D) to demonstrate just how devastating the power of the sun can be when focused through a DSLR camera lens.
Just incase you were thinking of photographing the solar eclipse or even looking at it, you may want to think again after watching the above video. Before the camera was connected to a Canon EF 400mm f2.8 IS II lens you can see how focused the light coming through the lens is on the floor, just like a magnifying glass. But to fully show the effect of the sun’s focused light, the large telephoto lens was mounted to the DSLR camera, which was then exposed for six seconds. After the relatively long exposure, the camera was unmounted, revealing smoke from burning plastic within the camera’s sensor housing.
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If you are in North America or anywhere else with a good partial view of today’s solar eclipse, check out our tips for capturing the eclipse here.
The video makes for tough watching if you love cameras, as it shows the sensor of the Canon Rebel XT being burned after coming into direct contact with the sun’s light through a large telephoto lens without a solar filter attached to it. However, the demo was created to help other photographers avoid a similar disaster trying to photograph the solar eclipse, so we can forgive them for destroying a DSLR.
