The Sun...

Ive always been amazed by the snaps of sunrise and sunset and would wonder how in the snaps I saw, the sun would be this brilliant orange disk just about to set. In the snaps which I took with my digicam and earlier point n shoot film cameras, all I could manage was a white/orange dot or a small orange disk when zoomed.
Also, I was very wary of pointing the camera at the sun directly lest it burns my sensor or the camera.
However, once I discovered the funda of long telephoto lenses and got my very own 200 mm Nikkor lens, I gave it a try and amazing results ensued.
I realised that to get the best snap, I had to keep the f stop really high to get a pinhole aperture and the fastest shutter speed possible which in my case happens to be be 1/4000th of a second.
This causes the bright evening sun to look a reallly good orange with the clouds intersecting it and creating the following snaps :).

My equipment (from left) 55-200mm F4-5.6 Nikkor, Nikon D60 with a 50 mm F1.4 Nikkor mounted on it and a 18-55 mm F3.5-5.6 Nikkor.

Some snaps of a sunrise from the land of the rising sun:

Excuse the wires and the big power thingy..