Is your lens on this list?

benjiboy

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Not another scare story about radioactive lenses.
 
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digital&film

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Regardless, it's some great research over a broad spectrum on lenses.
 
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digital&film

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I had both of the "high-scorers" and they were my sharpest M42's.. still have/use the Takumar 50/1.4 even with the yellowing.
 

benjiboy

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You tube is full of videos of these prats with Geiger counters testing lenses and trying to spread alarm and despondency, my eldest son is a nuclear physicist who works in one of the leading nuclear facilitys in Europe, and he tells me none of these lenses emit a tenth of the nuclear radiation that a worker in the nuclear industry is legally allowed to absorb annually, and that the granite worktops in our kitchen are actually more radioactive, and as long as you don't sleep with the lenses under your pillow they are perfectly safe "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".
 

pentaxuser

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Bruce if you really fancy a good dose of background radio-activity never mind lenses on e-bay just come and live in Aberdeen, Scotland where a lot of your fellow Americans now live since North Sea oil arrived in the 1970s.

The granite there will fry you. The Aberdonians have been frying themselves for over a hundred years but that is due to visits to the "Chipper" as it is known. The "Chipper" can be deadly. Nothing to do with radiation of course. It's the name for the Fish and Chip shops where the food will send you to an early grave but with a smile on your face.

The beef lard used for frying makes the best fish and chips in the world but due to high animal fats is best taken with a supply of statin tablets

In an adaptation of the the words of the famous Tennessee Ernie Ford song when sung in Aberdeen "If the granite doesn't get you the beef lard will"

pentaxuser
 

ciniframe

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I have the Konime built Vivitar 55 f2.8 Macro in M42. I also have a 50mm f1.4 Super Takumar (not SMC) that has the tea stained glass indicating radioactivity over time. Back in the 60's and 70's there were popular US military surplus gun sight eyepieces adapted as wide field eyepieces for the amateur telescope makers. Some of them were radioactive and we had warnings about resting our eye for long times at the eyepiece. (such as in comet hunting).
 

AgX

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Be careful:
"being on that list" does not indicate anything, as for most lenses the measured activity is that of a common environment (those mean 160nSv/h).
 

snapguy

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twist

I stopped getting my underwear in a twist about radioactivity in the 1950s. The olde Big Bad A-Bomb Horror Movies were more entertaining than you list, I must say.
 

summicron1

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snapguy said:
I stopped getting my underwear in a twist about radioactivity in the 1950s. The olde Big Bad A-Bomb Horror Movies were more entertaining than you list, I must say.
Click to expand...

As a near life-long resident of Utah since 1952, and having lived in Salt Lake City at a time it was showered with radioactive dust from bomb tests when we were told to just stay indoors, wash the car, you can go about your business, these aren't the droids you are looking for, I find lists like this of little concern.
 

dynachrome

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I have a few questions about the list. Where is my Canon 35/2 FD SSC (1st version)? Doesn't that one count anymore? Where is the Aero Ektar? When a lens shows the same amount of radiation as normal background radiation, how do you test that and what good is the test? Why is the Canon 35/2 New FD also an excellent lens even though it does not seem to contain any radioactive elements?
 

benjiboy

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Thorium emits alpha particles that only travel an inch or two and in the very small quantitys of Thorium that may be in a lens can't penetrate human skin.
 

TheToadMen

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benjiboy

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If you own one of these lenses don't forget to put on your lead lined boxer shorts.
 

Dr Croubie

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So the SMC Tak 50/1.4 (I own one) is a lot more radioactive from the front than the back.


That's the perfect argument against gear-heads who only like looking at their lenses on a shelf without using them. Tell them that it's safer to be behind the camera and to use them more often...
 

Gerald C Koch

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We are told by the medical profession that potassium is good for our hearts. However potassium 40 is radioactive and more than 200,000 nuclei of this isotope decay everyday in the human body.
 

Theo Sulphate

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These radiation levels are trivial.

Eating a banana is 100 nSv, being behind a CRT (remember those?) for one year is 1000 nSv. Just being on this planet for one day gets you 10,000 nSv (10 micro-Sv). Compare that to the lens readings.

A handy chart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radiation_Dose_Chart_by_Xkcd.png

Remember: "a little radiation never hurt anyone"

Rant: perspective and context matter. So many of the issues I see on the "news" today is distorted because, either deliberately or through naivete, they do not present the total picture.
 
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