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Anyone using infrared thermometer for water temp?

bags27

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Saw a video of a guy using one for color development and just got one from Amazon. Not expensive. As I tested it, it's one degree cooler than my digital thermometer. Don't know which is closer. Wondering whether the infrared measures surface temps and the digital the (warmer) middle depth.

The advantage is that there is nothing to wash or mistakenly transfer (say) developer into the blix.
 
Mine is not high quality, so I use it for ballpark numbers and I use a glass/mercury processing thermometer for accuracy. I use the infra-red for measuring 120F water -- and rising steam messes with the meter if I get it too close (steams up the receptor or something).
 
I have a high end one that works well. those cheap ones they were selling during COVID were horribly inaccurate. I use it to adjust the water temp coming out of the faucet. I point it at the bottom of the sink where the water is hitting, not at the stream. It only reads surface temp so if you’re checking your chemistry you should be mixing it. I like it because it gives an instant and accurate reading.
 
I use one of those cheap black and yellow ones. It agrees with my calibrated/traceable thermometer within less than 1°F.
 
I just use the thermometer built into my Jobo CPP2 processor for both black & white and color film. That has always been accurate enough.
 
All of my experience with IR thermometers is in the culinary domain and they can be fickle when measuring liquid and air. Very good for assessing heating patterns on metal, though. Oddly and thankfully, the inexpensive black-and-yellow one is very accurate.
 

If you are sincerely interested, you can review the specifications and user manuals here:

Infrared Thermometers

Etekcity
etekcity.com
 
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Mine's black and orange and called Kizen. They're probably all made by the same folks.
 
This is the one I use, it’s actually made in the U.S.A. It’s an older one that I used for work years ago.
 

For faucet temp, I have an inline analog dial thermometer that agrees pretty well with my lab mercury thermometer.

I only do monochrome film and paper development. I designed and built my own thermocouple based compensating timer that both displays temp and - if desired - corrects timer running time for both film and paper accordingly:

tundra/devtimer

gitbucket.tundraware.com

In principle, that timer could be modified to provide better than 1 degree resolution because the thermocouple reports 1/10 degree increments as I recall. For monochrome, I didn't need it, so - to keep the display size smaller/require less circuitry - I round to whole degrees.
 
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