Safe distance for photographing operating tesla coils with digital cameras?

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Garry Freemyer" <garryfre@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Recently, I posted a url to my website that has some pictures of my tesla
coil in the photography Usenet group and the subject came up about the main
picture here ....

http://home.pacbell.net/garryfre/

and what is the minimum "safe" distance one should be from a tesla coil when
taking a picture, given the output power or voltage of the coil before it
starts messing with the camera.

Someone replied that by publishing this picture, I was risking the ire of
the entire tesla coiling community. They said "You are publishing a false
representation of what you actually saw when taking the pictures. What would
happen to your credibility with them?"

I asked him to elaborate on exactly what mis-representation he was talking
about but he didn't reply. All I can guess is that he was taking exception
to the publishing of the picture with artifacts that might have been due to
EMF or maybe dust floating in the air, but he was quite serious and sounded
angry. I am amazed how many crackpots are in that forum. Still it was only a
guess that he was having a cow over some elite standard he had set called
"Photo-Purity" and that artifacts constitute lies and that everyone should
hold to this standard. Does anyone have any other clue what this hoser was
talking about?

I remember, that all my pictures from the Northern California Teslathon were
ruined because I was too close and didn't know it. I had one picture, on the
digital stick where the foreground was a wonderful picture of streamers from
a coil at San Francisco, but was ruined by a clear image of my living room
curtain from my apartment some 300 miles north. Bleah!

So the question still remains. What would be the minimum distance for coils.
Does anyone have any guidelines that might be a clue? With my small coil
capable of 5 foot streamers, I kept a minimum of 30 feet away, and if I had
to be fifty feet away, I'd have to sell my left leg for a telephoto lens,
but I think it would not hurt to ask. Someone else might know via the lesson
of hard experience, so that I don't have to. I find myself cringing at the
idea of getting close to this coil I have, but how close is too close is
something I have no real idea.