Looking for a darkroom clock

[cowanw]

I am looking for a darkroom clock, about 7-10 inches in size, that tells time in the usual hours, minutes and seconds and is visible in the dark as a safelight red and can be turned to dim and off without turning off the timing function.
Please and thank you

 

[MattKing]

Have you considered an analog clock with a sweep second hand, positioned where your room safelight illuminates it?

 

[Pieter12]

I have one of these, with 2 layers of rubylith covering the display. Then I have a pice of black foam core hinged to the top to cover it when I need total darkness. Works just fine.

 

[cowanw]

Have you considered an analog clock with a sweep second hand, positioned where your room safelight illuminates it?

This is what I am doing but my eyes are aging faster than the safelights which are dim.

 

[cowanw]

I have one of these, with 2 layers of rubylith covering the display. Then I have a pice of black foam core hinged to the top to cover it when I need total darkness. Works just fine.

An excellent idea

 

[MattKing]

This is what I am doing but my eyes are aging faster than the safelights which are dim.

Sounds familiar - but also sounds like a Country music lyric too!
My LED rope light safelight is so bright that that isn't an issue for me - it is even brighter than this appears:

 

[Don_ih]

I have one of these

an important part of any darkroom.

 

[AnselMortensen]

View attachment 363636

an important part of any darkroom.

Yes!
If you can't have a smile occasionally, what's the point?

 

[eli griggs]

Ruby lith on a cell phone or a darkroom light setting.

One option a lot of darkroom people don't look to is a Kodak time keeper clock, which records your work hours over a 24 hour period, with a on/off mechanical lever on the tiltable face.

The clocks' on a gimble, that can be mounted to a wall or sit on a shelf or table and it'll allow you to make real world calculations on your processing times, or elapsed times of a process with an open ended time period, to be discovered, like a fixer time.

 

[koraks]

@cowanw I had the same requirements you do, and also wanted a countdown timer that could countdown seconds and beep periodically. I ended up building something from a couple of 7-segment displays driven by TM1637 modules and an ESP8266 microcontroller. It links up with WiFi and syncs the clock with NTP so I never have to bother setting it. Not as easy as pulling something off the shelf of course, but it was a fun project and the result has been serving me very well for several years now.

 

[cowanw]

Koraks, I wish I was that handy. I do have a Atomic Clock but the 80 year old walls in my house protect it from the pesky time setting radio waves.

 

[pentaxuser]

This is what I am doing but my eyes are aging faster than the safelights which are dim.

It could be Elvis describing "Old Shep"

On a slightly more serious note and based on what Pieter 12 said Is there a light behind the face of the clock? Otherwise I am puzzled as to how rubylith covering the face helps

pentaxuser

 

[cowanw]

The Rubylith ensures whatever the wavelength of light given off by the numerals becomes safe - I think.

 

[koraks]

I do have a Atomic Clock but the 80 year old walls in my house protect it from the pesky time setting radio waves.

Yeah, those are/were nice. I understand the beacons may be becoming scarcer, though.

The project I did is actually not necessarily very complicated. And it might be possible to entice/bribe someone who's handy with electronics stuff to make one for you.

The Rubylith ensures whatever the wavelength of light given off by the numerals becomes safe - I think.

I do use rubylith for this purpose on my clock, too. It filters out some of the secondary (more greenish) emissions on the LEDs, and also improves contrast. However, keep in mind that any filter material only works if the light source emits light in the pass band to begin with. If you take a green light and tape rubylith over it, it'll just be no light.

 

[otto.f]

Apple watch, put the dial on red/orange. Or iPhone

 

[koraks]

Apple watch, put the dial on red/orange. Or iPhone

Is the Apple Watch "red/orange" pure red, and is that a B&W paper-safe red? I'd assume that the Apple watch uses a basic OLED, which means r+g+b, and you'd want to make sure none of the g and b is mixed in with the r.

 

[Don_ih]

If you put the Apple watch on "Theatre Mode", then you need to tap it to get it to light up (and it won't light up for notifications). But it's a bit pricey for just being a darkroom clock.

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I am looking for a darkroom clock, about 7-10 inches in size, that tells time in the usual hours, minutes and seconds and is visible in the dark as a safelight red and can be turned to dim and off without turning off the timing function.
Please and thank you

digital clocks with a red display are available. What's the issue?

 

[cowanw]

The main issue is turning the display off without stopping the clock. Pieter12 addressed this above. I was just hoping for a turnkey solution a la Koraks above.

​

 

[VinceInMT]

Have you considered an analog clock with a sweep second hand, positioned where your room safelight illuminates it?

I like the digital idea but I use a cheap analog like Matt mentions. Aside from the sweep second hands I like the slightly audible click each second which I have found handy at times.

 

[pentaxuser]

The Rubylith ensures whatever the wavelength of light given off by the numerals becomes safe - I think.

Yes, thanks I hadn't noticed that you had specified that it has to be visible in the dark so presumably has luminous numbers including the second hand for say print developing time. Just speculation on my part but if the face is facing out and not down and you don;t have to pass the paper close in front of the face then I'd have thought that the strength of the clock numerals@ luminosity would have been insufficient to affect the paper

pentaxuser

 

[Robert Ley]

I used a good sized (about 12-16 inch analog clock that I took apart and painted the hands with a glow in the dark paint. I also used plastic glow in the dark small stars and other figures on the walls of my darkroom. These glow in the dark plastic pieces prevented from walking into the walls more than once.

 

[Doremus Scudder]

Have you considered an analog clock with a sweep second hand, positioned where your room safelight illuminates it?

Exactly what I have to tell time with. For timing processes I have a host of other timers.

Doremus

 

[otto.f]

Is the Apple Watch "red/orange" pure red, and is that a B&W paper-safe red? I'd assume that the Apple watch uses a basic OLED, which means r+g+b, and you'd want to make sure none of the g and b is mixed in with the r.

Never seen a problem with my papers of Bergger

 

[cowanw]

Yes, thanks I hadn't noticed that you had specified that it has to be visible in the dark so presumably has luminous numbers including the second hand for say print developing time. Just speculation on my part but if the face is facing out and not down and you don;t have to pass the paper close in front of the face then I'd have thought that the strength of the clock numerals@ luminosity would have been insufficient to affect the paper

pentaxuser

Quite right but I also load large format film in the darkroom and need to turn the red off.