Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Been processing my own B&W film for a few months now and i'm really enjoying it. What i'm not enjoying is fumbling around in my pitch black teeny tiny condo bathroom. So i've been looking into a small basic safe light.

My question is what colour do i need, there are so many?

I'm totally confused. I'm just processing B&W with an eye towards trying my hand at C41 later on. No enlarging or anything else, i scan the film after it's processed and from there on play and tweak in the digital world.

Based on my reasearch, i think red? But i'm not 100% sure on that. Thoughts?

the darkroom in my college used a red light.

It depends on the film or paper. Sensitive pano or infrared you can't use a light. Ortho films you can use red, some papers can only use green, some red.

Now what are you doing when your fumbling in the dark? and what process you do intend to do in the safety of the light?

Cause while developing film, film has to be loaded into the can in complete darkness, no exceptions (except maybe ortho film). Once its in the can flip the lights on, it should be all good.

My point is the only thing done under a safelight is printing, so the printing paper is safe with safelights. Film is completely sensitive to the red light as much as any other.

If you're just processing film, you don't need a safelight.

Film needs to be loaded into the tank in darkness. If you have a 'daylight' tank (most plastic ones) you can then do the rest of the processing with the lights on as light baffles in the tank prevent exposure. Some steel tanks need to be emptied and filled in darkness.

No film is safe under a safelight, not even ortho film which is relatively insensitive to reds. Safelights are intended for printing only as paper is not very sensitive to the dark red light they put out. No safelight is entirely safe though.

now i wonder if my film will turn all red if i have a safelight on while putting the film strip into a reel

Ya I'm talking about loading the reel. Would really like to be able to see what i'm doing. Ocassionally I load in incorrectly and the film doesn't get spaced right. A friend Recommended I try one of those plastic tanks with ratched auto loading. I currently use SS tank and reels.

I wouldn't risk having a safe light even with ortho b/w films. I use a change bag instead of dark room now and find that it is much more convenient. No more running into furniture in the dark or stepping on a 120 spool / opened can of 135 which hurts like hell.

Also, check out http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1 ... SA325.html

I'm not sure if that is compatible with your tank but the over sized feeding portion makes the reel process real easy. After I switched over to those reels inserting film to tank went from a 5 minute process to 1 min.

Actually the spec sheet on kodak ortho litho specifies a red safe light and I have developed about 30 8x10" sheets under a safe light without a problem I rather like developing by eye.

yeah...it's good to be able to see what you're developing.

How do you see what you're developing when you do tank processing? 8x10 makes sense but I assume that it is a different process (probably tray?) than a typical 35mm/medium format tank processing.

It is the initial loading of the film that is causing grief, not the dev process itself. If you shoot ortho all the time having a safe light all the time would make things easier but if you ever decide to shoot pan, it may increases the chance of you fumbling during reeling or accidentally exposing your roll to the light through a simple mistake.

Yes tray and the safe light is at least 2 Meters from the film. Watching the negative coming up and deciding when to stop is very enjoyable.

Here is the kodak safelight app note
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professi ... ti0845.pdf