Mylar film that's safe for enlarging to cover windows.

[campy51]

I am looking to see if there is such a product that I could buy on rolls and cut to size to cover basement windows and also basement door with a half window for the occasional darkroom printing. I just want to be able to tape it over the windows when I want to print and remove after. Setting up in a bathroom is not an option and the inside openings on the windows I think are to rough for an insert to seal out light completely. Is making daylight or evening light into safelight for printing possible?

 

[Wayne]

Why mylar? Just get heavy black visqueen. Its ugly but its cheap and it works. You may have to double it over. I use it to black out my darkroom windows, and when I used to go on long photo trips I'd carry it for blocking out bathroom windows in motels.

 

[logan2z]

I use this stuff:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/66796-REG/Delta_13630_Black_Out_Heavy_6.html?sts=pi&pim=Y

There are probably cheaper alternatives, but it works great and doesn't require doubling up. They have a cling film version as well.

 

[fiddle]

I used roc-lon blackout lining material. Got a roll of a few yards from a local fabric store. I made a wood frame that fit tightly in the basement window frames, stapled the material with some overlap for slight edge light leak. Worked pretty perfectly. I can remove them when I need light in my basement. Did 6 windows this way. Pitch black down there.

 

[Donald Qualls]

I used to have an insert that went into a (large) bathroom window, and it worked very well. The key is to make it with a single piece of plywood that overlaps the window frame/opening, and an insert frame glued to the cover board that fits into the opening.

I made the insert frame just a smidge loose, and made up flaps from black masking tape that filled the space. I covered the joints between the insert frame and the main plywood piece with the same (two layers, in both cases), and before taping anything, i painted the whole thing, inside and out, with Krylon Ultra Flat Black. If you switch from tape to weatherstrip for the gasket between the insert frame and actual opening, you can fill a fair amount of roughness, but key here is that most of the light sealing is from the light having to make a sharp corner in a narrow space, with very flat black surface on at least one side. With this insert, weatherstripping on the door frame, and a towel in the gap below the door, my darkroom would get dark enough and my eyes would adjust enough that I could see my hands in the light from the luminous hands on a Graylab darkroom timer, when it was turned against the (light wallpaper) wall. I tray developed ISO 100 film on several occasions, and loaded film being pushed to beyond EI 5000, with a window insert I could put up and take down in two minutes or less.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

The best solution I have found for windows is black out curtains with one side painted black with fabric paint. Totally light tight. Then build a frame around the window with a 1x2 and put velcro around the outside of it. Velcro the black out curtain to it and Bob's your uncle. You can leave it up too since it looks neat, or just take it down when you are done.

I wouldn't tape things up. Total PITA.

If you want light to come through the window, you can get sheets of rubylith. I wouldn't trust it with the sun hitting it, but otherwise it will work great, and you'll be able to see outside.

 

[John Salim]

I've used kitchen foil in the past ! ..... it's metal and totally lightproof, but fragile that's all, so ok for temporary use.
Just make sure it's not in a position to reflect blinding sunlight outside.

John S

 

[Agulliver]

I've used kitchen foil. It's a faff if you have multiple windows but it certainly works.

 

[campy51]

I was thinking the mylar so it would still have light coming through for vision. I have a couple of windows that are hard to get at and would probably leave up the mylar on those.

 

[pentaxuser]

I was thinking the mylar so it would still have light coming through for vision. I have a couple of windows that are hard to get at and would probably leave up the mylar on those.

You thoughts echo mine. campy51. I too wondered if the right colour and thickness of mylar would let enough daylight in to act as a big safelight. There was certainly a recent thread on covering the window with red transparent material that allowed the poster to see into his garden, I think, but it actually worked for printing as far as I recall

I suppose the crucial matter might revolve around whether the light was direct or not. Indirect light in a basement or even north facing windows at northern U.S. latitudes would, I imagine, be a whole different "ball game" to south facing windows in summer in Arizona

pentaxuser

 

[Donald Qualls]

Yeah, make the window a safelight. That's how I read the original post.

One issue I see there is that most papers specify a wattage and distance for safelight as well as filter (like the old Wratten beehive safelights, with a 15W incandescent bulb, still needed to be four feet from your paper). I'd be surprised if outside light over even a pretty small window wouldn't wind up too bright even if the wavelength filtration is perfect -- and it never is.

You can probably get theatrical gel (comes in 24x30 sheets, at least, to go over spots and floods), and the manufacturers publish the filter transmission curves (small scale without graduated axes).

 

[pentaxuser]

Darkroom with a view
Discussion in 'Enlarging' started by Ron789, Apr 4, 2020

Found it as above. Worth reading and while the poster is in Holland there appears to be a stockist of similar or exactly the same stuff in the U.S

pentaxuser

 

[MattKing]

Kitchen foil may result in your neighbours reporting you as a possible grow-op!

 

[Pieter12]

If you choose to go the foil route, I would recommend Rosco Cinefoil https://us.rosco.com/en/product/cinefoil readily available through hB&H, Adorama, etc.

 

[jim appleyard]

I have seen that work for nonsilver printing processes, but typical b&w materials would be fogged from that bright of a light, even a red one.

No, not necessarily. In high school my photo teacher got sheets or rolls of some sort of red film/plastic and covered all the windows. He got it from (he thinks) Porters Camera stores, now out of business. This was a printing room only, no loading of film onto reels for developing. We never had a fogging problem.

 

[Donald Qualls]

That red sheet/roll material sounds like Rubylith. It was very, very red, originally made as a "local safelight" for process photography, lithography, and such. I suppose it's possible Rubylith is "red enough" to be paper safe at pretty high intensity. I wasn't sure Rubylith was still produced, but apparently Dick Blick carries it, along with several other vendors, and the manufacturer appears to still be in production. It probably gets a lot of use in silkscreen making, these days, as it can apparently be machine cut with a plotter to produce detail masks.

If it's long-exposure safe for printing papers, you probably could have loaded or tray developed ortho films in that light.

 

[pentaxuser]

Well ron789 the originator of the thread called Darkroom with A View hasn't shown us any examples of his prints but he clearly has done some printing and other than a bright sunny day when he had minimal fogging after 5 mins it appears to work. His window certainly looks more exposed to sunshine than our OP Dusty Negative seems to suggest his darkroom will experience.

What I find to be a pity on Photrio is that faced with what seems to be a success when convention says that this should not be possible the naysayers tend to deny it is safe or possible when it might help if they asked for the details of the circumstances in which the success was achieved and then gave their opinions about what an interested party like Dusty Negative might need to watch out for

pentaxuser

 

[MattKing]

Rubylith appears to still be in production, while Amberlith doesn't.

 

[Pieter12]

Rubylith is red and I wonder how that works with papers that require an orange or brown filter, such as Ilford VC.

 

[MattKing]

Rubylith is red and I wonder how that works with papers that require an orange or brown filter, such as Ilford VC.

In most cases papers are not sensitive to red.
The orange/brown safelights were designed to take advantage of other gaps in sensitivity, with the hope that if you used them, you could benefit from even higher light levels.

 

[Patrick Robert James]

The best solution I have found for windows is black out curtains with one side painted black with fabric paint. Totally light tight. Then build a frame around the window with a 1x2 and put velcro around the outside of it. Velcro the black out curtain to it and Bob's your uncle. You can leave it up too since it looks neat, or just take it down when you are done.

I wouldn't tape things up. Total PITA.

If you want light to come through the window, you can get sheets of rubylith. I wouldn't trust it with the sun hitting it, but otherwise it will work great, and you'll be able to see outside.

I am just going to quote myself from way earlier in the thread since it seems no one reads anymore.

Many years of experience using it off and on, not speculation. I've known printers that used it so they could see outside the darkroom in case a client came in. Works fine, but I wouldn't trust it with sunlight.

Don't use cinema gels. They are designed to be disposable and will leak other wavelengths of light. In a stage production it isn't a big deal if the red leaks a little blue. In the darkroom though, it is a big deal.

 

[Donald Qualls]

Most printing papers, VC or graded, are insensitive to yellow and longer wavelengths, while the human eye is much more sensitive to yellow than to red (especially deep red). Thus, a lower total light flux can seem brighter. An extreme example of this was the (very bright) sodium vapor safelights from a few years ago; those could be quite bright and still 100% paper safe, because their emission was mostly on a couple spectral lines in the yellow and orange parts of the spectrum -- well out of the range of papers (and some ortho films) -- with nothing in the green to blue range. Another example is yellow LED lamps; these can be quite a pure yellow and still paper safe at fairly high brightness, due to their completely lack of green and blue.