Soon I am going to document a bunch of pyrotechnic tests, by recording it on a digital video camera. I had Ideas of putting it behind a section of plexiglass to protect it from debris.

But what about VERY bright light like burining magnesium? I know it can damage your eyes, but can it damage your camera?

No. You can confuse your CCD for a few seconds (resulting in a white frame), but to permanently damage a camera you'd have to be generating enough energy output from your light source to melt that piece of plexiglass you're putting in front of it. If you manage that kind of destruction the camera getting fried is the least of your worries.

~Zero the Inestimable

Since the camera is digital, it is limited to what it can capture, so if anything outside these limits is captures it will just go white for a bit... you camera wont get damaged but you wont have such a great picture of the magnesium burning... a cool thing to do is put a sheet of welding glass over the lens and then film... it looks really cool

if you want to run test with large amounst of light get your plexy glass but now go out and get some of that plastic so that it makes things one way then you just glue that on and it should screen out any unnessisary light and you should get i nice clear picture