On Friday, 1 July 2022 at 22:21:49 -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: >> On Jul 1, 2022, at 6:26 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: >> >> On Friday, 1 July 2022 at 17:57:35 -0700, Adam Thornton wrote: >>> On Jul 1, 2022, at 5:08 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote: >>>> On Friday, 1 July 2022 at 20:12:44 +0200, Harald Arnesen wrote: >>>>> Except that we didn't use red light in our darkrooms at all, at least >>>>> not from the 1970s and on. ... >>>> >>>> Correct. I started darkroom work in 1964, and from the beginning we >>>> used amber safelights. I don't think red safelights have been used >>>> since long before that. >>> >>> When I learned film photography in the mid 1980s the darkroom had >>> red lights. Of course it was a very old darkroom in a middle school, >>> so I'm sure that _adequate_ darkrooms had better equipment. >> >> Hmm. Any idea how old the equipment is? I suppose you wouldn't >> expect people to replace existing, functional equipment without good >> reason. > > No idea at all how old it was. I mean, a) I was a kid, and b) it > was the first darkroom I'd ever seen so I had no basis of comparison. > I'm sure it was at least one and maybe more generations of > hand-me-down by the time I got to use it. But, I mean, "good enough > for middle school kids, and we got it for free" was probably good > enough, right? Yes, of course. I was just curious. But in the meantime many have reported using red safelights, so the answer's not that relevant. I dug back into my records, and found that I bought an OB (amber) and 3 (dark green, for panchro) safelight filter for the school darkroom on 19 May 1965. No mention of a red filter yet. And https://www.kodak.com/content/products-brochures/Film/Safelight-Recommendations.pdf agrees with me that amber is the most appropriate colour for black and white print paper. I wonder why red safelights were so prevalent. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php