This Radioactive Lens Might Ruin Your Pictures

The use of Radioactive Thorium Oxide in camera lenses was a very common practice in the 1940's-1970's and was used in photography lenses along with cinema lenses. The radiation coming off the glass elements of the lens tested is enough to show up on pictures and ruin long exposures, astro timelapse or star stacking photos. The radiation coming off the rear element of the Pentax lens used in the test was around 650x (24,000 CPM) background radiation.

The star trail photo is from a place called White Pocket in Arizona and the shot was taken over the course of 3 hours. Stacking was done in Photoshop.

The Geiger counter used in this video was a Thermo Scientific Radeye B20.
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#radiation #radioactive #thorium