Sous vide "cooker" for darkroom use??

[GRHazelton]

Has anyone tried using one of these for a temperature controlled water bath? Just think! When your're not developing C 41 you can prepare your New York strip steak for perfect grilling. Wowzer! It seems that the best of these machines can circulate heated water - about 75F to 190F with temperature control of +- .4F. Prices range from $130 to over $200. Cooks Illustrated's web site has tests of several of these little gems.

 

[Rob Skeoch]

we have the Sousvide Supreme, and use if for steaks and chicken all the time.
It would work great in the darkroom, especially for supper critical temperature items like c-41 or e6.

 

[MattKing]

It would work great in the darkroom, especially for supper critical temperature items like c-41 or e6.

Pun intended?

 

[B.S.Kumar]

I've been looking at these cookers. Is there one that works from 68F, which is the recommended temperature for B&W film? I could of course standardize on 75F...

Kumar

 

[Doc W]

I tried it but everything came out looking like chicken.

 

[Truzi]

My brother just bought one, though I doubt he'll let me borrow it for film.

I think we've a few members who have used these for film, I can swear I've read some threads on it, though I can't find them. Maybe I'm mistaken and they were using homemade film tempering baths to cook sous vide as well.

 

[Neal]

There are multiple threads on this subject. If you search I'll bet you will find someone with results you can consider.

Good luck,

Neal Wydra

 

[guangong]

Thought about doing this myself, but would temperature control be capable of holding temperatures within narrow range demanded for processing film? I am not interested in C 41, but E6. During winter months for still and movie BW film, I use large aquarium heater that fluctuates only a degree or so, but heating capability falls short for E6.

 

[Kino]

The listed tolerance for most of these cookers is within 0.5 of a degree of target temperature.

Whether that's realistic for some of the cheaper variants is debatable, but I'd gamble it...

 

[avb]

I use an Anova sous vide heater for both C41 and RA4. It’s a simple set up. I bought a Rubbermaid food storage container off of amazon that was the right dimensions for a relatively small footprint but still high enough to fill over the min point of the heater.

The heater is accurate to my thermometer. But make sure that you give the bottles enough time to heat up. The water bath will stabilize before the bottles.

I use 250 mL San Pel glass bottles for RA4 with a 16x20 drum and 500 mL amber plastic bottles for C41 with a Kindermann SS tank with 2 35mm reels.

The C41 is immersed in the water bath for processing and propped up on a ramiken to the right level. I usually have to go about 1 degC above temp on the Anova to account for changes in temp during pouring and agitation.

Since the RA4 is done in a drum outside the water bath I set the Anova at about 2 or 3 degC above rec temp. This becomes much higher if I process at low ambient temps.

The Anova can be set low as well. I set it to 5 degC in the winter to prevent freezing of my chems. My darkroom is in my uninsulated garage.

I’ve been using the Anova for two or three years with no problems at all. The photo above is my water bath in the RA4 configuration.

 

[kwm]

I bought a Silverchrest Sous Vide at LIDL, a german discount market for about 49 EURO. Temperature is constant. There is a video of Thomas Kramml on youtube, showing how to use this sous-vide for C-41 developement.

 

[B.S.Kumar]

The Anova can be set low as well. I set it to 5 degC in the winter to prevent freezing of my chems. My darkroom is in my uninsulated garage.

Can you confirm? The FAQ says:

WHAT ARE THE TEMPERATURE RANGES FOR THE COOKER?

• Your cooker can reliably hold temperatures from 77°F (25°C) to 212.5° F (99°C). The cooker itself can read higher and lower temperatures, but will not operate outside of the above ranges.
• The Cooker cannot boil water or cool water. Also keep in mind if your device is not going above 99° it may be set to C, when your desired temp is in F, and vice versa if you cannot set it below 77° it may be set in F, when you want C.

Kumar

 

[Shoom]

Thought about doing this myself, but would temperature control be capable of holding temperatures within narrow range demanded for processing film? I am not interested in C 41, but E6. During winter months for still and movie BW film, I use large aquarium heater that fluctuates only a degree or so, but heating capability falls short for E6.

I got an old lab immersion circulator off eBay for $71 with a stainless steel basin. I'm using it for my E-6 and it kept the water at 38.1C for hours according to my scientific thermometer.

The old lab units probably have tighter temperature control than a sous vide cooker, and can be found very cheap if you look around.

 

[avb]

Can you confirm? The FAQ says:

WHAT ARE THE TEMPERATURE RANGES FOR THE COOKER?

• Your cooker can reliably hold temperatures from 77°F (25°C) to 212.5° F (99°C). The cooker itself can read higher and lower temperatures, but will not operate outside of the above ranges.
• The Cooker cannot boil water or cool water. Also keep in mind if your device is not going above 99° it may be set to C, when your desired temp is in F, and vice versa if you cannot set it below 77° it may be set in F, when you want C.

Kumar

Where did you find this FAQ? Yes, I can set it to 5degC. But it only works if ambient is below that. I am specifically talking about the Anova brand heater with specs:

Temperature Range

• Maximum: 210°F / 99°C
• Minimum: 32°F / 0°C
• Variance: ± 0.1°

 

[GRHazelton]

I got an old lab immersion circulator off eBay for $71 with a stainless steel basin. I'm using it for my E-6 and it kept the water at 38.1C for hours according to my scientific thermometer.
On

I got an old lab immersion circulator off eBay for $71 with a stainless steel basin. I'm using it for my E-6 and it kept the water at 38.1C for hours according to my scientific thermometer.

The old lab units probably have tighter temperature control than a sous vide cooker, and can be found very cheap if you look around.

Looking at the various units' websites I've seen specs for temperature regulation of...+-.01 degrees. Hard to believe that a consumer unit could offer that sort of precision. I'd imagine that any sort of spec to be taken seriously would track regulation across a range of temperatures. See Cooks Illustrated for an informative test on several sous vide units. Spoiler alert!! None of them managed .01 +- regulation! What a surprise!

 

[B.S.Kumar]

Where did you find this FAQ? Yes, I can set it to 5degC. But it only works if ambient is below that. I am specifically talking about the Anova brand heater with specs:

Temperature Range

• Maximum: 210°F / 99°C
• Minimum: 32°F / 0°C
• Variance: ± 0.1°

https://support.anovaculinary.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000174926-Hardware

 

[avb]

https://support.anovaculinary.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000174926-Hardware

Oh. Interesting that it says that. Maybe because it’s not reliable in the lower range? But I’m still able to keep my chemicals from freezing by setting it at 5 degC.

 

[B.S.Kumar]

If the ambient temperature is 30C, can the Anova (or any other brand) hold the temperature at 20C? Here in Japan, in summer, temperatures are between 25C to 35C.

 

[avb]

If the ambient temperature is 30C, can the Anova (or any other brand) hold the temperature at 20C? Here in Japan, in summer, temperatures are between 25C to 35C.

No. It is just a heater that circulates the water and a thermostat. It is not a chiller so it won’t cool the water. I think all sous vide heaters are the same in this way.

 

[B.S.Kumar]

So one needs to take cold water around 15C, use the Anova to bring it up to 20C, and hopefully maintain it for the duration of the process. Now that it is summer, can you confirm that it is possible to do so?

 

[avb]

So one needs to take cold water around 15C, use the Anova to bring it up to 20C, and hopefully maintain it for the duration of the process. Now that it is summer, can you confirm that it is possible to do so?

I don’t know if a sous vide heater would be better than a water bath alone for this situation. On one hand, the sous vide heater would bring the water bath to 20C faster and be uniform. On the other hand, the sous vide heater might overshoot 20C.

 

[B.S.Kumar]

Thanks for the information. I get bored doing manual agitation, and want to stand develop. I was hoping this could be the solution.

 

[JWMster]

FWIW, I've just used the CineStill version for the first time yesterday to do three tanks of E6 and was pleased with it. That's 16 sheets of 4X5 and 5 rolls of 35mm. Cost is reasonable though probably not the lowest by any means at $99. I'm using a Jobo for processing - and it heats enough for the core chemistry, but for the 7 (reasonably quick) rinse baths, I needed more containers. So I'm using the CineStill in a bucket big enough to hold 7 600ML Jobo containers.

I am pleased that the results bear out what I find for most film processing - that rinse baths aren't precision time sensitive per se so much as "fuzzy", and consistency matters for how you handle all the other baths far more than mechanical precision in their timing as well. This has worked for me in B&W (D23), C41 and now E6. There are folks out there who will be better and more consistent than I for sure, but in general, "close" is good enough. Granted, I'm not TRYING to introduce variances nor condoning them either, but if there IS a material difference, I really haven't seen it - yet.

 

[mrosenlof]

I've used an aquarium heater for a B/W chemistry water bath. 20C was just fine in its range.

 

[JWMster]

FWIW, for E6 the CineStill (sous vide) unit was set to 108F (42C). This allowed me 2 degrees of cooling in moving out of the heat container to the Jobo. The unit could be used to run your processing if you wanted as it has 2 timers. Great thing is the speed at which these units heat up the water, too.