What Happens When You Take a 10 Million-Second Exposure of the Sun?

What’s the longest exposure you’ve ever taken? Thirty seconds? A few minutes? Check out this camera that shoots a ten million-second exposure of the Sun — depending on how long you leave it tied to your roof.

Matthew Vandeputte is well known for his time-lapse and hyper-lapse photography and has been making the most of his new flat overlooking the rooftops of London. This vantage point offered an ideal opportunity to try out solargraphy using a solarcan, a camera that is effectively a tin can containing a sheet of photographic paper and a pinhole. Vandeputte pointed it at the Sun for four months before rather nervously checking out the results.

Solarcan is a small company based in Scotland but ships its pinhole solargraphy cameras worldwide. There are also distributors around the world, including B&H Photo where you can pick up a single can for $19.99.

Solarcan launched 4 years ago on the back of a successful Kickstarter and has since made, sold, and shipped more than 13,000 cans. The northern hemisphere is little more than a month away from the summer solstice which could be a great time to set up for your first exposure.

Have you tried solargraphy? Let us know in the comments below.

Article thumbnail is "The sun" by Lima Andruška, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Andy Day's picture

Andy Day is a British photographer and writer living in France. He began photographing parkour in 2003 and has been doing weird things in the city and elsewhere ever since. He's addicted to climbing and owns a fairly useless dog. He has an MA in Sociology & Photography which often makes him ponder what all of this really means.

Log in or register to post comments
3 Comments

Thanks for sharing my video, Andy. Much appreciated!

10,000,000 seconds? You need a Lee FIlters 15 stop IRND and a supercomputer to calculate exposure

one word. fixer