Durst Sanat light - is it good for colour?

[eumenius]

Hello friends,

I am trying now to set up a colour printing in my lab. Well, I didn't do it by hands for some 10 years or even more, so I had a plenty of time to forget how should it work In the times I printed colour by myself I had an awful, very dim dark-brown Soviet safelight. Now I found a Durst Sanat in our lab - with a new lamp, working nicely. It's REALLY bright, so it makes me a bit puzzled about its safety I assume by the colour it gives and Na-vapour lamp that it was made for colour work? How far should it stand away from my workplace to avoid color paper fogging? Should I direct it light on the darkroom wall, or directly on the paper cutter etc.? Sorry if my question sounds a bit stupid, but in the times I printed colour by 6-bath process the water was just more moist

PS. BTW, the sensitization or regular panchromatic films, i. e. Ilford FP4, should not allow a visual inspection with the Sanat light? I recall that a very dark green filter should be used for that, so the filtered sodium-vapour light should give a fog, both direct and indirect lighting? That's not as if I needed a visual control over my development, I just want to see if I am right

Cheers,
Eugene

 

[edz]

.... Now I found a Durst Sanat in our lab - with a new lamp, working nicely. It's REALLY bright, so it makes me a bit puzzled about its safety

The Sanat is a very good lamp--- also is well made and looks like modern Italian design of the 1960s.. Very cool.
Yes its bright. And you will have to point it around and use very indirect lighting with some of the modern colour papers. The new generationl of RA-4 papers have been designed for digital printers and are overly sensitive--- such as Kodak's Endura--- to nearly the point of being ill-suited to our amateur darkrooms. We need to adapt and learn to work in darker rooms. Depending upon your set-up and paper it indeed can produce too much light and you'll need to install a neutral density filter in front of the orange filter (to remove the little blue line) that's sitting on the dichoic heat filter (if you open it up you'll see what I mean). With colour I'll instead use my Osram/Kaiser Lamp. Its not really as good a lamp but it has a mechanical aperature to allow me to attenuate its output at will. I also have a Nova 5-Star and a Jobo necklite to help we work even with the "worst" papers.

I assume by the colour it gives and Na-vapour lamp that it was made for colour work?

Of course. Also B&W/Multigrade. Its the best lamp, in my opinion ever made with one little (but significant) drawback: Bulbs. The NA10 bulbs are just too expensive. So expensive that I added for B&W/Multigrade a Kindermann Dukalux hanging lamp. I don't like the quality of its light as much as my Sanat but its very bright and the bulbs (PL-11w) are long lasting and very inexpensive. If I had a case of bulbs, however, I'd use my Sanat ALL the time. Its just such a great lamp.

How far should it stand away from my workplace to avoid color paper fogging?

Depends upon too many variables. Test. Test.. Test.. and install some ND filters.. The aim is to have it as bright as it can be while still being "safe".

PS. BTW, the sensitization or regular panchromatic films, i. e. Ilford FP4, should not allow a visual inspection with the Sanat light? I recall that a very dark green filter should be used for that, so the filtered sodium-vapour light should give a fog, both direct and indirect lighting? That's not as if I needed a visual control over my development, I just want to see if I am right

The Durst Sanat is the lamp that Kodak used to recommend for control of motion picture development. Keep in mind that once film is in developer its hardly sensitive anymore to light. Because of the spectral characteristics of the Sanat one can do a reasonable job of inspection. Again. . Test.. add ND filters.. etc.

 

[Neal]

Dear Eugene,

When I work in color, I just work without a safelight. Not really hard to get used to (unless there are more than one of you in the darkroom at the time.<g>) There is a fairly inexpensive product called the JOBO 5 star safelight that is supposed to be really good.

Neal Wydra