[Lord Lucan]

I was recently doing some macro photography with a ring flash and the picture came out almost entirely white. I had the flash on auto (ie an older unit controlled by its own sensor) and I think I must have inadvertently had a finger over the flash unit photocell.

The camera is still fine, but the flash had a relatively low GN of 8 metres (@ISO 100), the subject was about 60cm away, and the camera was on ISO 800 and f8, so it wouls have been about 5 stops over-exposed. It does make wonder however if there is a level of over-exposure that could damage a sensor or the electronics. I don't mean by pointing at the sun.

[BarryE]

Don't know the answer, but the sun is frequently captured in photos in all sort of phone/camera equipment and many will be overexposed. So my gut reaction is not, except for extreme cases I'd imagine. It will be interesting to see what folk say ...

[MossyRocks]

It can but it has to be very bright concentrated light. In your case I don't think it would be damaged unless you pressed the camera up to the flash unit and too a picture of the actual flash and even there I am unsure. By very bright concentrated light think one of those high powered lasers shined into the lens, a big telephoto shooting the sun unprotected, etc. and even there it would take some effort. Even with the sun I haven't had issues even using a 300mm shooting sunsets but I know that during solar eclipses people have damaged sensors and lenses. With eclipses it is usually the heat from a big telephoto that does things in but with very bright concentrated sources it likely damages the photon detectors causing a breakdown in the gate or insulator layers in the semiconductor (not entirely sure). The ISO 800 is just a gain added after the capture before the AtoD conversion so that just resulted in more clipping and not damage.

[ehrwien]

By very bright concentrated light think one of those high powered lasers shined into the lens

Don't try to take photos (or much worse: videos) with your camera where there's a laser light show like in a disco, the thing can kill a few pixels easily. Don't know how much power those have, doesn't seem to be a problem for our eyesight, but camera sensors don't like those.

As for an overexposed photo under normal circumstances... wouldn't worry about that too much. I once captured a lightning strike with my Nikon 1 V1, picture totally blown out, and after tuning down the exposure of the RAW I saw what I would say is some circuitry on the sensor, perfectly horizontal, evenly spaced lines visible right around the areas of greatest light intensity. Camera is fine, still working to this day.

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[ramseybuckeye]

I would think it would take a lot of intensity. I do take sunrises etc, but they are not normally long exposures. But I try to avoid having the camera sit on a tripod facing the sun too long, just thinking that the key could be creating heat inside.

[Bob 256]

I seriously doubt that any sensor damage would occur with few exceptions

Things that can damage a sensor are longer stationary exposures pointing at the sun through a low f lens of moderate FL (lots of security cameras endure many passes of the sun across their fields with no damage but they are using short FL lenses with small apertures), exposure to lasers (this was mentioned previously and it's a case by case risk - so no risk for many, and other cases are a for sure risk), and an exposure if you were looking directly into a flash unit with the camera (again, low f number). Even shooting a laser hitting a surface can cause sensor damage if the laser has enough power and the surface is reflective (A YouTube laser experimenter wiped out at least one camera sensor making videos of his laser "toy" burning things.)

It's unlikely a reflected flash (other than from a brightly mirrored object) would do any damage since the flash power has spread out and been diffused so much. At f8, the amount of light is reduced quite a bit further so I wouldn't expect any harm.

[vonBaloney]

Direct lasers and concentrated sunlight are the only things that could do it. Any typical man-made light or flash is not going to be a problem.

[Sakura]

Sony does warn for damage to sensors for there camera.s. I guess mirrorless camera's are much more sensitive for laserlight because using them you always are looking just to a display and the sensor is looking all the time directly at the laserlight if it is present. With a DSLR you will never look into a laserlight. Unless you are making video of course, than the sensor is also constantly exposed.

https://petapixel.com/2021/08/02/sony-officially-warns-that-lasers-can-damag...meras-sensors/

And it can go very fast.

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You Tube

[Paul the Sunman]

Interestingly, the cause and nature of laser damage depends on pulse duration (Schwarz et al 2017)

In the case of irradiation with millisecond- and longer-laser pulses, thermal effects that convert the laser energy into thermal energy are the main damage mechanism. This is related to the melting or vaporization of the material. On the contrary, irradiation with shorter laser pulses calls other damage mechanisms into play. That applies especially for highly transmitting materials, where the damage threshold is rather high. Laser pulses on the order of nanoseconds or picoseconds cause electrically induced damage due to the corresponding high laser electric field intensity and the short duration of the laser pulse effects, such as dielectric breakdown.

[biz-engineer]

Can Over-Exposure Damage a Sensor?

Hopefully not , otherwise many users would have damaged their cameras when using the manual exposure mode.

[DeadJohn]

Over-exposure will not damage the sensor. If you can take a 1 second exposure of something without damage, you can also take a 30 second or 30 minute exposure without damage. Your photo will eventually turn 100% white but the surplus photons won't damage the sensor.


Direct sun and lasers are exceptions, as already noted. Those are always risky even with short exposures.

[AstroDave]

concentrated sunlight are the only things that could do it

During one of the early Apollo landings on the Moon, the video camera was (inadvertently. I think) pointed to the sun - that camera was toast! That was probably a vidicon (electronic) tube of some sort, and a lot more delicate than current CCDs.

[kiwi_jono]

Very rare to damage a sensor from over exposure. Only cases I have heard about is:
1. Exposure to a laser (already referenced)
2. Camera with accidental long exposure with a sun shot (forget where I saw the report but it was pretty extreme circumstances).

[Tas]

doesn't seem to be a problem for our eyesight,

G'Day,

A bit off topic but wanted to mention something due to your comment.

I used to deal with lasers in a previous life and typically lasers have classifications and dependent on which class of laser will depend on whether it is eye safe. We had a Class 3B product that required an attachment to attenuate output to the equivalent of a Class 1 laser (as per AS/NZS 2211.1:1997 Laser Safety Class 3B was not eye safe, Class 1 was).

Different countries have different classifications, here's some links on the topic with US referencing: Laser Standards and Classifications & Laser classification table - Laser Safety Facts

Tas

[Kunzite]

5 stops isn't that much, is it?
OTOH years ago a friend of mine left a wide-angle converter (the kind he'd put in front of his PowerShot Gwhatever camera) on the grass, on a sunny day. Within seconds it started smoking. So yeah, that kind of "overexposure" would indeed damage stuff