Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by xsmasher 3218 days ago
Are you saying zooming in on the sun makes damage more likely?

Wouldn't zooming in spread the sun's energy across more of the sensor? Same energy, larger area = less intensity.

1 comments

The irradiance is determined by the aperture, which is measured relative to the focal length. So with e.g. f/2 you get the same heating of a given area of the sensor regardless of the focal length (i.e. "zoom").

Put differently, longer lenses typically also have bigger absolute apertures, collecting incident light from a larger cross-section. This compensates for the fact that a given solid angle of incident light is spread over a larger area of the sensor.