Safelight for colour paper?

[Dave Dawson]

Anyone use a safelight for colour paper....If so what which one do you recommend?

Cheers Dave

[Ian Grant]

It's best no safelight as the paper is extremely light sensitive. Sometimes even an odd LED on a haeter or timer is enough to cause problems.

Ian

[paul_c5x4]

I have a very small amber LED "safelight" from Nova that illuminates (dimly) the stopclock, but that is the only light used when printing RA4. The dev trays are kept several feet away from the stopclock.

But then I haven't done any safelight tests, so I may have low level fogging..

[Ian Grant]

As Paul says something like that is just acceptable, I have something that I used for Cibachromes in the 70's, its output is so low it throws no circle of light and is just enough for watching a clock type timer for developing prints.

I have a Philips enlarger timer that will fog colour paper because the dials are illuminated, so they need to be shielded.A friend had a constant slight green cast he couldn't get rid of and he tried everything, he just couldn't find a reason, turned out he used one of those early digital watches with the red diodes or whatever they were to time development

Ian

[Sirius Glass]

The best safe light for color paper is no safe light.

Steve

[Neal]

Hi Dave,

I was in a darkroom once that had a safelight for color paper. It worked well in that it didn't fog the paper. Unfortunately, it was so dim it really didn't help. If you develop in tubes there is no need at all for a saflight, but even if you use trays it's easy to get used to working in the dark.

Neal Wydra

[BetterSense]

I thought you could use a low-pressure sodium lamp, because RA4 paper had a sensitivity notch in it? That's what I heard anyway. Seems like you could use a certain kind of LED if that's the case.

[Photo Engineer]

I use 2 Wratten 13 safelights pointed away from the process and handling areas at the ceiling. Each is powered by a 5 - 7 watt bulb in a beehive safelight housing.

They are safe for use if you are not directly in the beam of the lamp for any time at all, and after hours in the darkroom can give a surprising amount of illumination.

Endura paper is built to have a "hole" in the sensitivity at the spot where the WR13 passes light. This minimizes the potential for fogging. I cannot speak for Fuji paper.

PE

[archphoto]

Back in the 70's I worked at a Kodak plant in Holland.
In the spooling-up room for dubble 8 and Super 8 Kodachrome they had a verrrrrry dim amber safe-light, just enough to see what the machine was doing and where to keep your fingers away from.
You needed about 10 minutes for your eye's to adjust.

So amber is posible, but DIMM it !
If you have a LED rated for 20 mA try it fist at 1 mA with a peace of scrap/test paper and make shure that you can dimm the LED even further......

A safe light in your color-dark-room is just there for orientation, nothing more.

Peter

[Bob F.]

Using my amber LED safelight I can have it shaded so I can just about avoid bumping into the furniture and just make out the outline of the trays in my sink. Any more than that and I risk fogging. This is with Crystal Archive - I just recently got some Endura but have not tested it yet. A sodium lamp has a narrower bandwidth and thus may be a better bet.

The spec for Crystal Archive paper shows a dip in sensitivity between approx 580nm and 610nm but I've no idea how that compares in terms of width and depth to Endura's notch.