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The Solar Eclipse of 2017 Destroyed Lots of Rental Camera Gear (petapixel.com) 140

Posted by BeauHD from the blind-spot dept.
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.
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The Solar Eclipse of 2017 Destroyed Lots of Rental Camera Gear More

The Solar Eclipse of 2017 Destroyed Lots of Rental Camera Gear

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  • 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.

    • No it is not (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Sunday September 03, 2017 @12:37PM (#55133141)

      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.

      • First of all, this whole mania about not looking at the sun ever is absurd.

        No-one said anything about not looking at the Sun ever.

        People do it all the time between eclipses with no lasting damage.

        Looking at an eclipsed Sun - even for the same amount of time (which is "very little") that you could stare at an uneclipsed Sun without incurring damage - is still more dangerous.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Cederic ( 9623 )

          No. It opens the chance of you staring at an uneclipsed sun without squinting, but in and of itself it is not more dangerous.

          The reason people are warned not to look at an eclipse isn't because it's more dangerous, it's because people forget to look away.

          • That's like saying that walking across a motorway opens the chance of being hit by a car, but in and of itself it's not more dangerous than walking across an empty field.

            The reason people are warned not to look at an eclipse isn't because it's more dangerous, it's because people [don't receive the usual physiological stimulus] to look away.

            ...which is exactly what makes it more dangerous. I don't get why people keep insisting on playing semantic games for the sake of being contrary.

            • Hardly semantic games. Your assertion:

              Looking at an eclipsed Sun - even for the same amount of time (which is "very little") that you could stare at an uneclipsed Sun without incurring damage - is still more dangerous.

              is just plain wrong. In fact. NASA's guidelines acknowledge that there is a minute or so of full eclipse in which it is entirely safe to stare with naked eyes. (Problem is, how do you know when to stop looking?)

              It is the time you spend looking at the partially eclipsed sun that counts, not the degree of eclipse.

              • Doh... I did mean to say partially eclipsed. Oops. A partially eclipsed Sun is still technically "eclipsed," but... yeah, not as clear as it was meant to be.

          • Forgetting has got nothing to do with it.

            It's dark during the eclipse. Thus, pupils of one's eyes are dilated wide.
            Thus, way more solar radiation enters the eye than when looking at the Sun in normal conditions.

      • Yes it is (Score:5, Informative)

        by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Sunday September 03, 2017 @01:08PM (#55133287)

        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.

        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) [petapixel.com]. 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.

        • 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 [gizmodo.com] at all - so how can it possibly compare to the damage done by a camera lens which is enti

          • Enough people got blind or damaged the eyes enough to wear a yellow arm binder with 3 black dots.
            Why do you insist that looking into an solar eclipse is safe, when it clearly is not?

            • Staring into a solar eclipse is no more dangerous than staring into the sun when there's a quarter-Moon in the sky. Which is pretty dangerous. Glances into the sun - fractions of a second - aren't particularly dangerous, but that's not "staring". Of course, you don't get to actually see anything productive with a glance.

              Put yourself into the bare feet of our ancestors yomping around on the savannah. One of them glances up at the sun in response to, say, the cry of a predatory bird. Eye full of sun ; looks

        • Re:Yes it is (Score:5, Interesting)

          by hankwang ( 413283 ) on Sunday September 03, 2017 @04:59PM (#55134139) Homepage

          It's not just irradiance (W/m2) that counts for retinal damage for two reasons. 1. Removal of heat is much more efficient from a small spot than from a big spot (3D versus 2D heat transfer). 2. Involuntary drift of the eye spreads out the dose if the spot size is small. (Try fixing your gaze at a spot for 10 seconds - you can't).

          Some of the camera damage was in the aperure blades. Those were not in the image plane of the lens (similar to your irises). Those get quite a bit more dose if there is a big-diameter lens in front of them.

          Disclosure: years ago, I reasoned that you wouldn't get blind from looking into the sun for 0.3 seconds, with binoculars, based on your irradiance argument. And tested it. Well, I didn't get permanent eye damage, but the after-image was 8x bigger in diameter than that of the sun with the naked eye and lasted for a day - rather disturbing. That was before I learned about the mechanisms of laser-induced damage.

          • 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 "Y

        • No it is not (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          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 st

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          Nobody in their right minds would try to shoot the sun at f/4, though. They'd crank it all the way down to f/44. Which is fine until the camera stupidly opens the lens up all the way to focus...

          ... and that's when it catches fire. :-)

      • Re:No it is not (Score:5, Insightful)

        by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Sunday September 03, 2017 @01:11PM (#55133301) Journal

        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.

        People do it all the time, and then look away immediately because it causes their eyes to water and then hurt. 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. It's a similar issue to sunburn on cloudy days: because less IR is hitting your skin, you don't realise that you're still absorbing a lot of UV and so end up burning even when you don't feel that warm. You've evolved a set of danger reflexes for things that damaged a large proportion of your potential ancestors, not for the rarer events.

        • Did you try it? (Score:2, Informative)

          by SuperKendall ( 25149 )

          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

          • I don't live in the US, but during our partial eclipse a few years back I was able to look at the sun and had to remind myself to use filters or look away quickly.
      • my mother told me not to stare at the sun

      • If your SLR camera allows you to stop down the lens before you press the shutter button, you can use that feature to safely use the viewfinder while photographing an eclipse. Typically, the procedure goes like this: set the ISO sensitivity as low as possible (50). Set the shutter speed as high as possible (1/8000). Focus for infinity. Stop down the lens as far as possible (f/22). Point away from the sun and put your eye to the finder. Find the sun through the finder, immediately press the shutter release, a

        • I'll let you try that.

          I brought solar filter material for the 1999 eclipse, and keep it, it's mountings (some for cameras, some welder's goggles uprated to solar-capable, some sheet material taped onto an interchangeable filter square, and one "lunar stop" for a 150mm telescope, with solar filter film attached) and a roll of gaffer tape in a satchel that has got rolled out every eclipse since. Inspect before use (a pinhole might develop ; spiders like the bag in years it's not used) but otherwise observing

    • That $11.5K lens, though. OUCH.

      They can repair the lens for far less than that.

      I decided to read the blog post and discovered the guy wasn't really complaining about this. He states this is something they were expecting would happen - "Things happen, and that’s why we have a repair department".

      Of course at the end he makes it clear the customers who damaged the equipment are going to be paying for the repairs, which is entirely reasonable.

      • I thought it was weird that they advised customers to buy solar filters for the event. If you're renting the camera or lens, why would you buy a solar filter? After you return the camera, what would you do with it?

        • Yeah, I agree - but the same would probably be true if the rental place bought a bunch of solar filters and then rented them out. After this one event, there wouldn't be much demand for them. Maybe they could've "rented" them out for the (wholesale) cost of buying them.

          Having said that - I might see if I can pick one up on the cheap, post-eclipse, and add it to my filter set. I saw some cool "eclipse" photos of the ISS transiting the sun... solar transits might be a fun sort of shot to work on.

        • Surprisingly, astronomers have been observing eclipses for over a century using all sorts of photographic equipment and some pretty big "light buckets". Generally, they (or the ones I've talked to, at least) buy sheets of filter material designed for the job, and make up a "big end" filter for each scope they intend to use. Next eclipse, if they're not using the 12in scope, but are using the more portable 8in scope, it's an easy task to make a 12in filter fit an 8in scope. Actually, it's not much harder to

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      And your eyes are not invaluable!

  • 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.

  • At least according to the president [cnn.com] who has rose colored glasses that protected his vision.

  • Destroyed Lots of Rental Camera Gear? (Score:3)

    by ebonum ( 830686 ) on Sunday September 03, 2017 @12:18PM (#55133063)

    From TFA:
    "Thankfully, there were relatively few items that were returned to LensRentals with this type of damage"

  • 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 als

    • One thing I don't understand is how someone can be an avid-enough photographer to want to use pro equipment for photographing an eclipse, yet not avid enough to either already understand the need for a proper solar filter or be motivated to do the research into how to get good eclipse shots.

      But perhaps these were simply people with more money than sense, as the saying goes.

      • how someone can be an avid-enough photographer to want to use pro equipment for photographing an eclipse, yet not avid enough to either already understand the need for a proper solar filter

        Marvin put it very succinctly : "It gives me a headache to think down to that level."

  • 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.

    • The USERS are the people who destroyed the equipment.

      And yet on any other day the users don't seem to destroy the equipment. It's like there was some mitigating event that people weren't prepared for.

      In other news, all the home owners in Texas destroyed their own houses because they didn't have them built just right to withstand the right amount of water.

      • No, the calendar destroyed all those homes in Texas, by being the day of the storm.

      • And yet on any other day the users don't seem to destroy the equipment. It's like there was some mitigating event that people weren't prepared for.

        In other news, all the home owners in Texas destroyed their own houses because they didn't have them built just right to withstand the right amount of water.

        Really? That's what you're going with?

        As even TFS you didn't read pointed out, the rental business went to enormous lengths to tell people how not to rack up repair charges by damaging equipment while shooting the sun. The eclipse, unlike a hurricane, came and went without a CHANGE of destroying any of that equipment until a human being set it up and pointed it directly at the sun without taking the precautions they were repeatedly told to take. As for people who choose to build a house in a regular flo

        • As even TFS you didn't read pointed out, the rental business went to enormous lengths to tell people how not to rack up repair charges by damaging equipment while shooting the sun.

          You mean TFS that referenced TFA that told people about using solar filters, which subsequently said that the most expensive of the damage came from someone who did actually use a solar filter?

          That thing I didn't read?

          Nice try though.

  • Not only brighter but how the obstruction makes more light reach the viewer?

  • 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/... [flickr.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      Is that a typo for 500mm? Refractive designs for 50mm lenses are simple and cheap enough that there isn't much call for a reflective one.

      • Is that a typo for 500mm? Refractive designs for 50mm lenses are simple and cheap enough that there isn't much call for a reflective one.

        Yep, should have been 500mm. Fingers working faster than the brain again. :)

  • From 8/21/2017 solar eclipse? ;)

  • Shot tons of photos with OnePlus, nothing bad happened.

  • Some people never listen. All you can do is educate. After that it up to them to listen. Idiots everywhere.

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