The sun goes away, but you've already started... what to do?

[Removed Account]

We've had several days of rain and I've been eager to try out my first Van Dyke Print. Late this afternoon the sun decides to come out! I rush and coat a sheet of paper, I think 18 drops for a 4x5 neg.. maybe a bit much. I should note 10, wait to dry, then 8 more drops. It seemed dry under the red light so I clamp the paper and neg in my makeshift frame (actually a framless clip picture frame) and out I go. It's fairly late so I figured I'd have a lengthy exposure, but I can see the sensitizer is darkening so I figure all is well. About 7 minutes in to the exposure the sun decides to duck behind the clouds, and after a few minutes it doesn't look like it'll come out before night fall. My only hope I figured is to use my household fluorescent lights. So I bring out the camera and extend the tripod legs + center column until the top of the camera is about 12" below the lights. It's cooking as we speak. Any guess on if this will work? :munch:

Edit: After the couple of minutes it took me to write that, I checked the frame. And darned if it ain't working! Someone's going to be up all night printing!

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Unless it turned pitch black, I would have left the frame in the sun and exposed for about three or four times the remaining exposure time. Ordinary fluorescents put out a little UV, but not much, compared even to a cloudy sky.

 

[Katharine Thayer]

I don't know anything about printing with fluorescents, except that when I moved into a workroom with fluorescent overhead fixtures, I learned that I had to keep them turned off because they fogged my gum coating badly in the time it took to coat the paper. But I'll second David's advice: it's amazing how much reflected UV you can get outside, even in complete shade or under a cloudy sky. I haven't experimented with it much, but the couple times I did, I found that I could get a gum print in 3 or 4 minutes with reflected UV, about the same as with my printing light inside. What I didn't like about it: since the UV is diffuse (coming from everywhere instead of from one point) the prints were much less sharp than with my usual photoflood bulb. Hope any of that is useful,
Katharine