Normal Dust Levels?

[rbarker]

Thank you for the kind words, Bruce.

Is there a blushing smilie?

 

[ChrisC]

This past weekend I finished off the finishing touches to my new and first darkroom. Well, so I had thought.

The back wall of it is concrete, and upon running my hand up against it, a small pile of concrete dust appeared right on my benchrop, right where I was planning to put my trays! I'll have to buy some sealer for it this weekend, and it will give me a good excuse to paint the whole room too. But I was greatly looking forward to doing my first prints. Good old Murphy's Law huh?

 

[Glenn Mathison]

OK, so how about this? Use the absolute fastest film you can find, then push it maybe 3 or 4 stops, then print 10% of the frame to at least 10x8 inches, then you won't be able to differentiate dust from grain.

And you can tell everyone it's "arty" to boot.

 

[Woolliscroft]

Bruce David - I like "Tephratype" - sounds classy. What's the Greek word for "crappy"?

Well, let's see. The Greek for dung in general is "Kopros" so you could have a Koprotype, but human dung in particular is "Skor", so as photographs tend to be taken by humans I suppose a sh.t photo could be a Skorotype. One Greek word for diarrhoea is "Spatila", so presumably a bad photo taken with a motordrive would be a Spatilatype, whereas a bad digital photo would be "Skor eis aritmon" (sh.t by numbers).

David.

 

[bjorke]

Winter is dust season for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere The furnace definitely kicks a lot of it around... while reducing the humidity. Extra-fluffy animals this time of year, too. I'm always amazed at the places where I can find cat hair.

 

[rbarker]

David - thanks so much. You've given me not only a whole new basis for an improved marketing campaign, but also real hope in life.

Gnothe Kopros!

 

[lee]

Sean,
With regards to your darkroom, if the walls are not painted I would do so with a painting primer called Kilz. This will be enough to keep the dust down. No carpet in the room and no animals either.

lee\c

 

[Loose Gravel]

Sean, I've worked in and around clean rooms for years. They have a few tricks that you can use and some you can't. In a class 10,000 clean room (the number is so many particles of dirt a certain size in a cubic meter?), which is good for satellite assembly and the like, it is not that clean. These are huge rooms. People wear tyvek suits and booties and hair covers. Sometimes you vacuum your clothes. No paper. This is something you can do is to reduce paper. As cheap paper gets old it sheds. Those old boxes and such...get rid of them. All equipment going in is cleaned by wiping down and vacuuming. Air handlers have good filters on them. Floors and walls are washable. I've never done the flashlight test in one.

In cleaner clean rooms, such as class 1000 or 100, the air handling gets better. Full bunny suits for people. No perfumes. Air is changed every few minutes. I think some of these have grates instead of floors. And it is only really clean at the work surface level.

In my darkroom, I don't have any great air handling. Everything is washable and gets a wipe every few months. I try to reduce the junk that is in there. When I dry film, I leave the room so the dirt isn't stirred up. And no flashlights.

A photo teacher told me that he always closed his eyes when he was loading film --- so he didn't see the light leaking under the door. It's like that.

 

[g0tr00t]

Developing/printing in the nude. Hmmm...sounds like a good poll question.