I concur with you Hersch but would add that the danger is not from the
brightness of the light but from the ultraviolet light rays that the sun
emits and which are not screened out all that much by one-way mirrors and
pentaprisms.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
[mailto:owner-filmscanners@halftone.co.uk]On Behalf Of Hersch Nitikman
Sent: Saturday, February 03, 2001 11:17 PM
To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
Subject: filmscanners: Re: looking at the Sun
I'm sure others will chime in on this one, but I can't let that advice go
unanswered. Just because the image in an SLR viewfinder is replected up
through a pentaprism and a ground glass screen is no reason for
complaisance about looking at the sun with such a camera. The efforts to
make the screen view as bright as possible makes the light level in the
eyepiece just about as dangerous as looking at the sun directly. True,
there is some reduction, but in many cases, if not most, it is still bright
enough to blind in a short time. Don't do it!
Of course, a sunset may have the light attenuated enough by the atmosphere
to make it safe. But, if it is uncomfortable to look with the unaided eye,
don't gamble on looking through the viewfinder of an SLR.
At 01:32 PM 02/03/2001 +0000, you wrote:
>In <5.0.2.1.0.20010131154337.00a149f0@pop.freeserve.net>, Stuart wrote:
>
> > But,of course ,no-one would do so while looking through the viewfinder
as
> > this would be extremely detrimental to ones eyesight and if the shutter
> > was released would it not burn the blind ??
> >
>I don't think this is true of SLR's, as the image is formed on the ground
>glass screen and then the eye at the viewfinder looks at that image rather
>than the sun itself. In a viewfinder camera this might be different, as
>there is no ground glass screen; you look straight through the viewfinder
>lens(es). Also the mirror in such a camera covers the shutter blind until
>the last second, after which the blind moves very fast, I doubt if it would
>be focused on the blind of film for long enough to have any effect.
>
>Brian Rumary, England
>
>
