Ice Lenses

S

somecanuckchick

Tundra Gypsy
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When I first read about these things the first thing that popped to my mind was making it into a lens. hah. Pretty interesting. But yeah, never tried to.
 
Well the links have been moved, so unfortunately the images aren't viewable anymore. Unless I missed something, that is.
Making your own optics isn't a small task with even the simplest methods, and ice isn't a simple material to work with. It suffers creep (changes shape, even under its own weight), must be kept cold, etc.
So it could be a fun challenge, but you could expect a ton of work and mediocre results for sure.
I've read that early infrared astronomy was done using optics made from common salt. It is at least mechanically stable, just dissolves when anywhere near water. That was supposed to be very taxing to the opticians.
Hey, with water ice you've only got one refractive index to work with, right? So no achromatic optics? What if you combined ice and halite (salt) optics to solve the problem?
 
Bryce said:
Well the links have been moved, so unfortunately the images aren't viewable anymore. Unless I missed something, that is.
Making your own optics isn't a small task with even the simplest methods, and ice isn't a simple material to work with. It suffers creep (changes shape, even under its own weight), must be kept cold, etc.
So it could be a fun challenge, but you could expect a ton of work and mediocre results for sure.
I've read that early infrared astronomy was done using optics made from common salt. It is at least mechanically stable, just dissolves when anywhere near water. That was supposed to be very taxing to the opticians.
Hey, with water ice you've only got one refractive index to work with, right? So no achromatic optics? What if you combined ice and halite (salt) optics to solve the problem?
Click to expand...

I don't know that Salt would work. But I do know that these lenses are not "made" to last for very long... as some of them seem to be allowed to "melt" for "effect".

P.S.
These links work for me:
http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/frozen_lens/
http://www.ektopia.co.uk/ektopia/archives/2006/06/06/ice-lens-photography
http://photondetector.com/blog/2006/06/01/ice-lens/
http://www.open2.net/roughscience3/ice_lens.html

i.e. I get no 404s when I click them and am able to see (small) images (taken with the ice lenses) at 2 of the links.

http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/frozen_lens/
http://www.ektopia.co.uk/ektopia/archives/2006/06/06/ice-lens-photography
 
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I haven't used an ice lens, but in my field, water is commonly used for immersion lenses, especially for UV applications.

Also, as we all know, when you put a droplet of water on a hydrophobic surface, it beads up and you get a lensing effect- I suppose that if you did this on a hydrophobic coverslide then you could use this effect to make a contact macro lens for looking at a little bug or something. Looking from the other side, you could make yourself a water fisheye lens. Now that's a true fisheye! Kind of a pain to have to point it vertically all the time though ;) But maybe you could freeze a droplet on a surface and make a lens that way.

The main problem I see with making an ice lens -other than that you have to watch the temperature!- is that you'd really have to work hard to reduce imperfections and keep the surfaces clean. Being a cold surface, moisture in the air will adsorb on it like crazy and fog the surface. And if you take a close look at an ice sculpture you'll see all inds of bubbles and cracks and imperfections. It turns out that making very high grade ice is not an easy task; in fact it is quite a science, isolating and studying the various phases of ice.

But I have seen pretty decent ice windows and they do have some lensing effect, just not good enough for practical work. As I recall I think the famous ice hotel has some pretty good flame-polished windows. So it is possible, and easier in winter dryness, but it's just not practical.

P.S. Adding salt will depress the freezing point. To get higher freezing points you have to decrease the pressure...but if you look at the phase diagram, you see that it won't help much ;)
 
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O.K., I was able to open short articles showing a couple of images, and a video clip (sadly I have no sound on my computer).
I'm curious how he fabricated the lenses. Maybe by selectively melting the ice?
Anyway, an interesting idea for sure, but it seems like it would be a ton of work for a very rough/ easily simulated image.
How about making similar lenses from something more stable- like clear acrylic? You could melt it to the desired shape and then use it at your leisure for extra Holga like results?
 
Keith-
I wasn't thinking of using salt water ice to make a lens; I was thinking that if you had two or more elements, one of ice and the other of halite, you could engineer an achromatic lens assembly. The two elements would of course need to be separated...
 
The enjoyment one gets from photographing with an ice lens is reciprocated by the lack of enjoyment of photographing in ass freezing temperature. I'll pass.
 
You could do it in the summer, you'd just have to be quick about it...
 

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Haha, quick indeed.

Bryce, you're right, using a monomer dissolved in solvent you can make very nice lenses. For example, you can pour poly methy methacrylate (PMMA) into a mould, heat it to 200 degrees or so to polymerize it and drive off the solvent, and it will harden nicely into a plastic which is transparent down to 210 nm. With PMMA you can make decent lenses e.g. for contacts.

I imagine you could make some kind of lens for b&w photography using tree resin. You might try that next time you're out hiking and you drop your priceless elmarit down a ravine ;) Tree sap is the monomer source for latex, as I recall. I don't now offhand how to cure it. Maybe melting amber would be easier.
 
An ice lens is green, of course, as it can be recycled by dropping it into a scotch and soda when it is no longer satisfactory as a lens. Certainly a politically correct lens if nothing else.:rolleyes:
Kurt M.
 
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