Random darkroom lights

Hi folks. I hope this is the right spot for this question.

I’ve got my darkroom set up in my spare room with my Super Chromega C Dichroic enlarger but I’ve got a bunch of random LED lights in here too. My internet modem and wifi router have several green LEDs each…there are green LEDs on the two surge protectors…etc

I don’t really want to permanently cover all these little LEDs with electrical tape and I don’t want to have to repeatedly apply and remove tape over them either. I also don’t feel safe throwing fabric over the surge protectors to block those lights. I suppose I could just throw my change bag over the modem and router but there’s still a few other random LEDs in the room. And of course i don’t want to shut off the internet to the whole house whenever I’m printing. (Nor can I move the location of the router and modem).

I see that there are red safelight filters available but they all seem like they’re for specific light fixtures. Is there something I can buy like loose sheets of red safelight filter material that I can cut out myself and permanently leave over all the random LED lights in my studio?

Would Rubylith masking film work or is there something more suited for photographic darkrooms? Am I overthinking all this?

Thanks!
José

subtlelikeatrex said:

Would Rubylith masking film work or is there something more suited for photographic darkrooms?

Click to expand...

It'll be almost the same as simply covering the LEDs with black gaffer tape. LEDs are narrow-wavelength devices. A blue led emits around 450-480nm, green usually around 525nm, yellow/amber is around 580-600nm and red usually around 620nm. The cutoff frequency of rubylith is somewhere around 600-620nm, which means that virtually all light of smaller wavelengths is blocked. This means that your green, blue and amber/yellow LEDs will simply not show anymore and you might as well block them off with something like gaffer's tape or tinfoil, cinefoil etc. Red LEDs you can mask with Rubylith, but it's generally not really necessary if you just print B&W VC in that room. Of course for film loading etc. the place needs to be entirely dark to begin with.

You have to keep in mind that a filter like Rubylith doesn't change the color of light. It just blocks certain colors. If the light source emits a color that's blocked by the filter, you simply see nothing.

I had the same challenge you have since my darkroom is basically a multi-purpose space; it's my home office, darkroom, hobby room etc. There's a computer with monitors and all kinds of equipment, a network switch with blinking lights etc. Some of the LEDs I've masked with tape, in other cases (e.g. a network switch) I've actually removed the series resistors from the LEDs inside the switch so that they cannot light up anymore (external masking wouldn't have been effective due to all the seams and holes in the housing). Some equipment like the split unit aircon I just don't run when I'm working in the dark. Computer monitors I just turn off (standby LEDs are masked with tape), same with the cordless mouse. So basically I've decided from a practical and case-by-case viewpoint how to darken each of the unwanted light sources. I've even gone so far on a keyboard I used previously to swap out the green LEDs for amber ones (since I also print color), but on my present keyboard I've not bothered and I just turn Num Lock off when going to 'dark mode'.

I happily use a piece of Rubylith over the digital display of my darkroom wireless.
The lights on my two enlarger timers have been chosen by the makers to be safe when in use. Hopefully.