Summicron Radioactive--Is this true?

Oly.Zuiko 50 1.4 white nose are. Some.

I know some people who are also buying some old military aircraft clocks to have them matching their Leica LTM collection on the book shelf. Often those gears have glowing in the dark paint. It will make the needle of the radiometer shown in this thread flat at the right side. Yet, those clocks and else are sold on eBay by clueless without warning.
 
mpaniagua said:
My collapsible Summicron serial # is 1042919 and it does has some yellow tint (don't really mind, cause I use it on b/w only).

Thing is, when I use a collapsible lens on the IIIf of IIf (being Elmar, Summitar, Summicron or Summar), I normally carry it on my pants front pocket.


Should I be concerned about the radiation level from the lens? Any case for concern?

Best regards

Marcelo.
Click to expand...

There were just some posts (also by me) on Flickr about this.
Not sure how harmful it may be. All I know is that in the lab where I (still, 65 since two days) work, we use beta emitters as tracers in scientific experiments. When we get counts like shown in the pictures, there's a good chance that the experiments worked out well :). In the courses I followed to be allowed to work with these tracers (true, already 40 years ago), we learned to shield our bodies behind 2 cm thick plexiglass screens. Beta emitters can't go through. Beta emission (fast electrons) can't pass thinner layers of lead either, but supposedly the X-rays that result from the electrons hitting the lead can go through lead and that's why the plexiglass was better for shielding. Of course, it also helps that you can look through it to get the job done at the other side. X-rays and gamma radiation are the same "type" of radiation.

Remember, these lenses were from the time that the USA and Russia (and also France and England on a somewhat lower scale) had numerous tests of atomic bombs that loaded the atmosphere with tons of radioactive tritium (beta emitter) of which part is still flowing around us (half life 12.5 years). At the time radiation damage was known mainly as something that quickly did the job. Long term effects were not studied yet. We now know that cancer from smoking is not only the result of inhaled "tar", but partly also from the accumulated natural thorium present in tobacco.
 
Handy rule of thumb chart :) from http://www.nukepro.net/2012/04/geiger-counter-interpretation.html

Just don't ingest the Summicron. :)



geigercounterreadings.PNG
 
To add some recent info to this old thread -- I just opened a 50mm LTM collapsible Summicron Serial # 1,116,xxx and found one interior element that has a strong yellow tint to it, noticeably different from all the others.
 
The last Nikkor lens using radioactive thorium were the early versions of the pre-Ai 35/1.4 (both all metal and early rubber clad focusing rings) from the early 1970's. Later going to Ai versions, different glass was used to achieve similar effect but it's one of the very few Nikkors whose basic optical formula never substantially changed and is still being made today (I think).
 
Interesting articles, thanks! How different things were when radioactive substances were commonly used in commercially available products like lens and watches. I still feel horrified about the watchmakers who got oral cancers from licking the small brushes they'd use to apply glow-in-the-dark radium to watch dials and faces.
 
Yes, it can be scary to think of radioactive items such as cameras and lenses. I once had a WWII large sized camera with a radioactive lens. It was a large as a small dorm fridge. I borrowed from the Physics Dept. at UWF a Geiger Counter, and then I took some measurements of the camera and lens. Someone at NASA gave me instructions on how to use the Geiger Counter. It turned out that the camera/lens was OK, but I gave it away as a gift to the Pensacola Naval Aviation Museum. It took them two years to get clearance for displaying it since the US Navy has very specific procedures they had to follow due to the radioactivity. There is a thick glass housing around the camera now.
 
Interesting comment in this video (starting around the 6:10 mark) about the yellow glass acting a 1/2 stop yellow filter.

 
Some of those old lenses are very radioactive, I tested a Flektagon 50 and a Biometar 80 and the geiger counter went mad (sold them soon after). More than 10x background radiation and rising, coming out in a cone and measurably well above background some feet away. One side was worse than the other, I forget which way round but i think one was front and the other rear elements.

When the thorium decays it turns into other radiactive substances and some of those can be beta or gamma emitters, and some of these lenses are old.

Some people to say "oh photographers won't get in the line of the rays much how many hours a year do you hold that lens" but that seems to be based on no actual knowledge f radiation given out, added to which when people are storing them in domestic premises - say on a shelf in the living room - it's not so good.
 
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