Please don't refer to yourself as an "old fart." This is such a degrading disrespect for old age -- a time of self respect. Unfortunately I've been seeing this trend of self degradation too much lately and it certainly gives me the willies. The word "fart" is much stronger than the word "poot." Please just STOP this nonsense!! Any substitute such as "missing shigles," or "hole in the roof" would be in better taste. Forgive me if I have offended thee, and if I have, Kiss my royal ass!

So here is an answer from B&H about the use of the viewfinder, and also about the NOT recommended use of neutral density filters.

Richard

Perhaps I've overlooked it, but for all of the astronomy guidance you omit a common B&H customer scenario - a photographer with objective ND filters (also an unanswered question by Darryl Hendricks 3 weeks ago).

It seems that a 100,000x reduction is needed, which works out to ~16.5 stops of ND to safely view and compose with an optical viewfinder. Although stacking a couple filters may be less than ideal, how does it compare to a white spectrum solar filter?

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3 hours ago
Christopher Witt

Good morning,

This is a common question, and I apologize for not seeing this sooner. The issue with ND filters is that since they are designed for photography, there is no ultraviolet (UV) or infrared (IR) blocking to them, so while the intense bright light will be brought down to a safe level, your eye would receive an enormous amount of UV and IR radiation that can cause catastrophic harm to your eyes - and since we have no pain receptors for radiation, you won't know it's happening until it's too late. You need to ensure you use filters that are certified for "Safe Direct Solar Viewing"...currently the most reliable of these is the ISO 12312-1:2015.

As an aside, if you are using ND filters on your camera make sure you don't use an optical viewfinder as you'll run into the same issue as outlined above. ONLY use ND filters if you have a digital viewfinder or are planning on using the 'live-view' feature on the rear display screen. If you don't know what kind of viewfinder your camera has, DO NOT use an ND filter until you find out.

Maybe a stupid question and I think that I know the answer, but I'm going to ask it here for clarification anyway. We all know that the .jpeg format compresses the picture data and that the data deleted is gone forever unless otherwise backed up with another type file that doesn't use compression. This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. Anyway, this compression obviously takes place when the original edited RAW file is converted to .jpeg, but does this also happen every time I make a copy of the .jpeg file? If I do a simple file copy to move a .jpeg file from one location to another, do I get the complete original .jpeg data or is it compressed again even if the picture is unedited?

We are planning a trip to Oahu Hawaii this Thursday. We have a family wedding and then sight seeing for the rest of the time. Kinda a last minute request....But any hints on taking photos over there? We plan on Pearl Harbor and lots of other areas. Wondering about suggestions for Lens and settings for taking pictures Luau, waterfalls. Hope I can get a few ideas from you talented folks. Or point me in the direction on here for answers to my questions. I was told this was a GREAT place to come to for advice. Thanks in advance

Mary Ann

I think the sun should be white. The yellow-orange color that I get comes from my filter. But it looks like you are not in focus, and you may be overexposed. There is a very large sunspot currently close to the center of the sun. I don't see it at all in your image. You might want to check this NASA website for current solar images. That way you'll know what you are looking for. What I get looks like the NASA "HMI Intensitygram - Flattened" image near the bottom.

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/