How thorium in acrylic resin filter behave on photograph

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

I am thinking to add thorium in to acrylic resin as much as thorium glass. Does it give final pictures like thorium prints - orangish red - or does it behave , add anything to final picture ?


Umut

 

[Nodda Duma]

Please don't mess with thorium, for the sake of your health.

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

Please don't mess with thorium, for the sake of your health.

Hello Jason , one of my friends from alternative list printed hundreds of thorium prints in his lab. He even dries prints in his room. I am thinking to buy from him trace amount and mix in to acrylic resin.

What does it behave on pictures , nothing or something ?

Thanks,

Umut

 

[Gerald C Koch]

Thorium oxide is added to optical glass in order to change its refractive index. There is nothing magical about doing this except that it can create new glasses. Lead oxide does the same think in making leaded glass. So adding it to acrylic resin will not get the desired result. In addition the oxide will not dissolve in the resin and would create a cloudy dispersion.

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

Is there any thorium oxide nanopowder ? Gerald , I found some brown tinted leica glasses gives hell lot of reddish orange color under tungsten light like thorium print , just the equivalent , not different.

I found if abbe number is around 65 , it gives that tone. Higher the abbe number , it goes to red , just like most modern leica glasses. I am thinking that long tradition of vermillon color is the result of italian , french , flemish paintings of 17th century or earlier.

All the 50s publishings with ektachrome film on leica , covers these autumn colors.

I am trying to make a filter with same result.

I think my best bet is to buy small cube of schott optical glass with abbe 60-65 , slice and use at cokin filter housing to get impressive colors from my diy lens.

I know plastics have greenish cyan color shift at dim light and I think this was not a good idea.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

A thorium glass lens is initially colorless but radiation eventually causes the glass to take on a warm color. This however takes many years. There are didymium glass filters that have an orange color. One of the uses is to filter our the sodium spectrum and are used by glass blowers to better see their work. Another use is to warm up the color rendition of color film.

http://www.starna.com/ukhome/d_ref/didglass.html

 

[Nodda Duma]

I know several colleagues in the optical industry who worked heavily with thorium when it was still allowed for use in coatings, who subsequently died of cancer.

Please stay away from thorium. Don't be stupid: It is not worth the risk.

 

[Mustafa Umut Sarac]

Thank you Jason,

I am listening you and I will keep your advise.

Thank you Gerald,

Is there any other exotic glass filter I should be aware ?

Umut

 

[Nodda Duma]

Ok good. By the way Google this: printed lens voxtel

Have fun