I'm equipped to tray develop even nitpicky sets of 8X10 tricolor separations using pan film with perfect uniformity and precise density. If necessary, I have a thermoregulator that keeps the tray temp inside of 1/10th deg F. That's ridiculous overkill for routine black and white work, so a basic unregulated water bath is ample, assisted by a Zone VI compensating dev timer. I live in a temperate costal climate and my sink room has R23 insulation in the walls, so even during long film dev times, the temp in the surrounding water jacket hardly drifts at all. ANY safelight use would ruin the kinds of things I frequently do with film. As far as color papers go, I tried those various amber filters in my Kodak lights, and found them useless. My problem was loading heavy big rolls of 40 inch wide Fujiflex paper onto the roller mounts below my cutting table. Momentary use of a tiny little Jobo Minilux light hanging around my neck solved that issue. After that, I have guide and stops built into the table that allow me to precisely square and cut the roll down into various sheet sizes in total darkness. I have quite a bit of drum processing equipment on hand for color print processing, but prefer tray processing for all black and white applications except small roll film, where I use Jobo hand-inversion tanks.
