As the Sun slipped to the horizon, the evening haze and cloud began to mask the fiery globe. Shapes were silhouetted against the disk of light. The evening became mysterious and the warm glowing colours were strangely comforting.

Now, looking directly at the sun is a really bad idea… and, normally, using a single-lens reflex camera with a 600mm telephoto lens to enlarge the sun’s image is seriously stupid!  The concentrated light could burn your retina and do permanent damage to your eye.

The atmospheric haze that turns the brilliant Sun to shades of orangy-red cuts the amount of transmitted light and that makes taking a photograph safer and possible. (Don’t try this yourself:- it is high-risk, and I strongly advise you not to do it.) 

If you must, the using a digital camera viewing-screen is less risky than looking directly through a viewfinder, but you could…