Photographing towards the sun / sunsets..

[Cris_L]

I've seen a fair few photos in magazines etc that show a subject, sometimes a portrait, with the midday sun in the background. And obviously there are plenty of images of sunsets etc.

Obviously i know about the dangers of viewing the sun directly wqith the eye but in tyhe manual for my camera it says pointing the camera at the sun will damage the sensor...

so how do people get these images? or is my manual just being over cautious?

 

[towershot]

Choose a sun thats nearly down and you take a chance ........or not.
when you use strong filters like on this shot (grad 9 ) it will give some protection like a pair of sunglasses, but I got some flare in this shot,but left it in as it looks more natural to me lie a film shot lol

You can see the flare just right of centre.

 

[Astraeus]

I am no expert in this regard but I can only speak from my personal experience of shooting sunsets on Santorini. I got no flare during the sunset and the ball of highlighted whites similar to the above photo was much smaller - the only reason I can think is that I only started shooting once the sun was in the process of setting and, whilst it was still burning bright, it was more orangey than yellow and not quite as vicious. That leads me to think the damage/potential for damage is minimised as the sun is in its cooler stages (not in the middle of the day).

 

[Scarecrow]

Just don't point your camera at the sun when you have a large telephoto lens attached. It would be like looking at the sun through binoculars/telescope. Definite no, no.