[COFF] Safelights (was: "9 skills our grandkids won't have")

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Friday,  1 July 2022 at 22:21:49 -0700, Adam Thornton wrote:
>> On Jul 1, 2022, at 6:26 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> 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 <grog at lemis.com> 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
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