a clump of Snake’s head Fritillarys at the national wildflower center in liverpool. These flowers are nearly extinct, with virtually all of those remaning growing on one site in the south east of england.

a clump of Snake’s head Fritillarys at the national wildflower center in liverpool. These flowers are nearly extinct, with virtually all of those remaning growing on one site in the south east of england.

a clump of Snake’s head Fritillarys at the national wildflower center in liverpool. These flowers are nearly extinct, with virtually all of those remaning growing on one site in the south east of england.

The FED-5 is a 35mm rangefinder camera, produced at the Kharkov working commune in what is now the Ukraine.

It has an M39x1 leica thread mount, attached to which is perhaps the most interesting thing about the camera, its Industar-61L/D lens this is the standard lens for the FED-5. What is so unusual about the lens is that it’s radioactive, due to the glass contained in its 4 element Zeiss Tessar based design containing Lanthane.

Lanthane is a rare earth element, with a half life of in excess of 100 billion years, despite the lens emitting radiation, it is not dangerous as the levels are so low, even touching the lens you will absorb less than half the amount of radiation that you absorb from natural levels of background radiation.