I accidentally melted my mirrorless camera sensor box and stained sensor on Nikon Z6iii!

That’s crazy!

Thanks for sharing... I still would like to know why this occurred. Have you tried reaching out to Nikon to get an explanation from them?

And we care because?

Wow, unbelievable, I need to check my camera sensor now

😂😂if you take to Nikon, warranty doesn't cover when you try to bake in the oven😂😂😂

It's not the sensor, Its only thé OLPF, if that was the sensor thé party would be over now 😭

I have taken thousands of photographs of the setting Sun including time lapse and never experienced an issue like this. What does an icon have to say I just can't believe all of the pictures people have taken of sunsets just had to be caused by some type of defect.

I'm sure it would have helped if you were able to determine which lens and which scenario caused this! Also on a side note.. what is that tripod?

This is a clear manufacturer's recall.

I always use my lens with ND 4 or 8 filter + polarizer filters against sunsets. It is a DSLR.

What lens did you use for the timelapse?

The stain on the sensor was most likely caused by fumes that were created during the melting of the outer box. The rear glass of the lens you were using at the time was probably also stained by the fumes that were created. If the manufacturer had made the outer sensor box out of sheet metal instead of plastic, the problem probably wouldn't have occurred.

It happened to me on Z6 with adapted Helios 44M-4 lens. I was taking a picture with the sun in front of me, but not in the picture. Apparently sun focused outside of picture frame and in the exact same spot on the sensor box. I could see the smoke in my EVF and immediately turned the camera away. I had a stain on my sensor as well, which was caused by the smoke.
This may happen even with the camera turned off. If you don't have a lens cover and camera is pointed toward the sun, it can very easily get focused on the internal surfaces.
Modern Nikon lenses have some sort of protection against it. If camera is turned off, aperture always gets set to the smallest possible, so that as little light as possible gets through it.

FYI if you take some manual focus lenses you will find that a 28mm lens will set a piece of paper on fire much faster than a 100mm lens. The reason for this is simple, it is because the light of the sun is much more focused with a wide angle lens. I would suggest you avoid pointing your camera towards the sun if you are shooting with a 28mm or wider lens. I will also point out that superwides are the worst for this effect and you should NEVER point a super wide at the sun. BTW I have not a clue if using a heavy ND filter will prevent this but it is possible that a 10 stop ND filter will increase the exposure time enough to dissipate the heat produced by the sun focused on your sensor to a safe level. BTW, I am NOT going to test for this because I don't have a spare 3000+ dollars I am willing to throw in the trash.

Cool pictures , remember that the Sun is very powerfull , never poit directly without a solar filter (astro)😅