Led “safelight” for alt processes

glbeas · Jul 10, 2020

I found a good LED safelight for my alt processes at Home Depot a while back that looks like it will be pretty good as the manufacturer said it has no uv output with a color temp of 2100 k.
Fein BPAT19/LED 60 watt equivalent 4.5 watt.
What useful lights have you found for your alt process workspace?

Donald Qualls · Jul 10, 2020

Lowe's doesn't know it, but they sell complete safelights, even for silver halide enlarging papers. One aisle they've got reflector clamp lamps; another they have solid red LED bulbs. Drop a Jackson, and you're out the door. Can't even get the bulb from Freestyle or B&H for that.

Setup up to diffuse of a wall or the ceiling, please, not direct in your trays.

I also got my "plate burner" there -- same clamp lamp, plus a black light CFL bulb. Slow, but cheap.

koraks · Jul 11, 2020

glbeas said:
What useful lights have you found for your alt process workspace?

I just use the red safelight I also use for silver gelatin. They're red led strips filtered with two layers of rubylith to block out the green secondary emission peak that virtually all red leds have (particularly the higher powered ones). The additional filtering is certainly not necessary for alt. processes, but I found it a necessity for silver gelatin.

glbeas · Jul 11, 2020

I find it difficult enough to see the sensitizer when coating in the low watt tungsten much less a red safelight.

Nokton48 · Jul 11, 2020

I followed Jason Lane's lead. I bought a classic Kodak "bullet" safelight (the fully adjustable one) with a dark red 1A filter. I went to Lowes per Jason and installed a 3W red LED bulb. It's deep deep red and dosen't fog his ASA 25 "Speed Plates". Bright enough to develop ortho by inspection. Previously I used my paper safelights and sadly fogged a box of 4x5 Ilford Ortho film.

I like Jason's safelight setup so much I bought a second one; one shines on the trays in the darkroom sink, the other shines from the corner where I load film. It's also bright enough that I can see what I am doing when I slice up XRay film with my Rototrimmer. No fogging any more!

koraks · Jul 11, 2020

glbeas said:
I find it difficult enough to see the sensitizer when coating in the low watt tungsten much less a red safelight.

Use more light
As long as there's no UV in it, you can get away with pretty damn bright lights.

nmp · Jul 11, 2020

I have a standard Kodak safelight as well as yellow bug light which is quite bright. The problem with both of those is that some sensitizer coatings, like that of cyanotypes, become quite invisible - making it hard to keep an eye on them while being applied. I just bought a regular incandescent (11W) bulb that I am going to use while coating.

:Niranjan.

Andrew O'Neill · Jul 11, 2020

Fluorescent bug lights from Canadian Tire.

Fraunhofer · Jul 11, 2020

I use incandescent yellow bug lights. I’ve seen those also as LED lights and would be surprised if they would not work.

J 3 · Aug 5, 2020

I can vouch for yellow incandescent bug lights. The yellow is very effective at removing blue and UV and you can see very well under the light. I've also used Feit Electric red LED bulbs but I've not tried them with something ultra sensitive (say loading 100 ISO ortho film under safelight). The great thing about most alt process media is that its so insensitive that minor mistakes often don't make too much of a difference when the main exposure is baking the thing 6" away from a bank of UV lamps.

Led “safelight” for alt processes

glbeas

Donald Qualls

koraks

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Nokton48

koraks

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nmp

Andrew O'Neill

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Fraunhofer

J 3

Led “safelight” for alt processes

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