Which nightvision googles for darkroom work?

MCB18 said:

You get used to it, you understand what you’re doing, you feel around, eventually you get to a point where the night vision is more of an inconvenience than anything.

Click to expand...

Your usage - slitting and re-rolling large quantities of panchromatic, light sensitive materials - is a relatively extreme case.
I expect that if I did a lot of colour printing I might be tempted.

After nearly 50 years of LF photography, for some very odd reason I've recently had trouble loading film holders. Maybe, at 73 my dexterity just ain't what it used to be? Anyway, my NightFox goggles make loading holders a breeze with much less chance of harming the film.

Work in the total dark with eyes open, knowing where you typically have things and don't get fussy about what goes wrong, it'll come together.

Ive gotten so use to working eyes open, there have been times I've thought the lights were on while working in the dark, but so far, no misadventures.

Alan9940 said:

After nearly 50 years of LF photography, for some very odd reason I've recently had trouble loading film holders. Maybe, at 73 my dexterity just ain't what it used to be? Anyway, my NightFox goggles make loading holders a breeze with much less chance of harming the film.

Click to expand...

A nice thing about using LF paper negatives is your safe light makes processing that much more interesting.

IMO

eli griggs said:

Ive gotten so use to working eyes open, there have been times I've thought the lights were on while working in the dark, but so far, no misadventures.

Click to expand...

This has happened to me before, it is extremely freaky. I know that the lights are off and I shouldn’t be able to see anything, yet my brain knows where everything is so well that I can. Pretty incredible.

This thread is interesting to me. I definitely get the use cases.

I worked at pro labs in Toronto doing image assembly in the '80s.
We made multiple exposed internegatives so enlargements could be made from them.
I wish I could remember the model of IR viewer. It was really heavy on the head, and we needed to wear them a lot.
It didn't happen to me, but my colleagues reported that they sometimes got shocks from the crummy cable on it. Yikes!

We had to remove the negative from a pin registered easel and remove the lith film masks in between exposures to change transparencies and make changes to the enlarger.
It's a bit foggy in my memory, but I had done this at another lab previously. At the first lab, we didn't use an IR viewer. It wasn't a hardship, but I did like using the IR at the next job.

The biggest job I was involved with was 21 exposures, made across 2 8x10 internegatives.
Fun stuff, and so was all the prep. required to make the layouts, and lith masks. Lots of overtime.

My modest darkroom has no need just yet but I can see using one for loading film etc.

Cool thread.

For me, working with a Cirkut camera, the IR goggles a necessity when spooling my own 10x72-inch rolls from 250-foot rolls of aerial film or the 100-foot bulk Ilford rolls, ensuring it’s cut squarely, joining leaders, etc. I was able to break down a 100’ bulk roll of 8” HP5 in a couple of one hour sessions with the goggles. In addition to speeding up the process, it greatly reduces the chance of making a costly mistake when handling that much film at once. And they comes in handy when attempting to load exposed film into my hobo-Jobo 4x72 drum for processing. I’m also clumsy, and prone to tripping, bumping into things, and knocking things over, so being able to see in the dark saves me some grief there, too.

One thing, everything I have is monocular, and narrow field. If I need to move a few feet I use a sink or countertop as a handhold. Like closing one eye and trying to judge depth. Very tricky.