[HATS] Re: Fw: [BitBucket] CCD cameras and sunlight

[dave@stevens.com]

One of the benfits of CCDs is that they do not respond like a tube to bright 
scenes.  Whether it is a Vidicon, Image Orthicon (guess I hinted at my age 
with that one) or a Plumbicon, they are ALL affected by bright spikes.  I was 
on a camera crew in Texas years ago when the sun came up over the stadium 
(behind us).  The light reflected on a hand rail on the other side of stadium 
and into the lens of an broadcast TV camera.  The camera was OFF, but the 
lens was NOT capped.  The resulting burn was with us for two weeks, until we 
replaced the tube with a new one.  (as I remember, it cost over $3,000.00 for 
each of the (3) tubes in those cameras)

CCDs don't do that:)  They do not retain an image or hot spot.  They will 
show a vertical spike on the sun or other very bright object (such as a shot 
of an arc welder).
Some show the spike upward only, others both upward and downward.  But when 
the bright image is gone, there is no latenet image on the CCD.

The first thing a camera salesman did during a demonstration of my first CCD 
camera was to shoot directly into the sun.  Needless to say, I thought he was 
nuts!!

Hope this helps!
73
Bill Fairley
WA4TCC
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