Looking for the pro's and con's of using a f/stop timer, and what brand would you recommend or not recommend, thanks Richard
Printable View
Looking for the pro's and con's of using a f/stop timer, and what brand would you recommend or not recommend, thanks Richard
I have and RH Design Stopclock professional. I love it. I don't know of any con's. I's my favorite piece of darkroom gear. http://www.rhdesigns.co.uk/darkroom/...fessional.html
There's also: http://www.darkroomautomation.com/da-main.htm
Mr. Linden is a member here, and he's very helpful. I expect it's a great timer, but I haven't used one.
Same here best thing Ive bought for the darkroom. The Stopclock pro is an awesome piece of kit. It makes f/stop and split grade printing easy and pleasurable. As far as companies go it dosent get any better for customer service than RH Designs.
The main advantage of an F-stop timer is that time changes, and dodges and burns, become very intuitive. In addition test strips become evenly spaced.
I bought the RH Designs Analyzer Pro. Really a handy device! :) The customer service is excellent, too.
RH Designs Stop Clock Pro is really the next best invention since the cheese :)
I don't nearly use all the features but as said it is very intuitive to use it when you think in camera terms instead of seconds.
I use RH Designs Stopclock Pro. Couldn't do without it at this point. It has two channels which makes split grade printing very easy. It has a test strip mode that allows you to expose each strip at a fraction of a stop more than the previous strip. It has additional channels that allow you to program in multiple burns such as edge burning or any other burn as f-stop increments to the primary exposure. It allows you to adjust the fractional f-stop increments for each step of exposure from 1/24 stop to 1 stop. I use 1/6 stop most of the time. It has a function to account for dry down. Once you test for drydown percentage (e.g. 7%) then you program that number in, generate your final, fine, wet print - then punch the drydown compensation button to expose the sheets of paper that will dry down to look like the wet print.
It is a huge time saver and it allows me to do complex exposure sequences that I never would have attempted with a regular timer, at least without a lot of swearing. There are many threads on this with more details. I think they make regular timers obsolete.
Thanks for all the great info, after reading WAY BEYOND MONOCHROME the idea of a f/stop timer makes sense. Thanks again, Richard
I think that there are advantages to each. I own an RHDesigns timer, but sure wish it could display the exposure time directly in stops rather than in seconds. I do not find it intuitive that 13.454 seconds is 1/2 stop more than 9.514 seconds. I understand that the Darkroom Automation f-Stop Timer dispenses with seconds altogether and instead displays similar times as 3.7 and 3.2 stops (relative to 1 second) respectively. After a little practice, I found this handy and intuitive.
Darkroom Automation published a very hand pdf file of a timer face marked in stops that can be printed, cut out and taped to the face of a common GraLab timer.
The RHDesigns timer has finer resolution, to 1/24th of a stop vs. Darkroom Automation's 0.1 stop, but I find that 1/6th of a stop change is sometimes hard to perceive in the print so this may not be an important advantage.
RHDesigns expressed amusement at my suggestion that they incorporate a mode displaying time in stops, and claimed that nobody had ever asked for that before.
Neither company picked up on my suggestion to use a spin knob to adjust the exposure time. Spinning the knob clockwise past 12 o'clock to the 6 o'clock position would add 1/2 stop, or counterclockwise to the 9 o'clock position would subtract 1/4 stop.
aduncanson,
Interesting thoughts. I think it takes some time to get used to either system, RH Designs of Darkroom Automation. I have never used the DA timer but I suspect it takes time to get a feel for how many seconds are in "3.2" on the timer.
When I do dodges or burns I still like to count seconds in my head because I can't count in stops. On the RH timer, I might want to dodge a face in a photo by 1/3 stop, but I can easily figure out that that is, for example, 4.5 seconds by pushing the down button twice in the 1/6 stop mode which I usually use. So it is a simple matter of counting 4-5 seconds of dodge time during the main exposure. I am not sure how I would do that with a stops only display without extra steps.
I agree that the time measurements are not intuitive values for f-stop differences. However, it rarely matters. For example, whatever my base exposure time is, I might do a 2/6 stop edge burn. I just push the program button for the first edge burn and then the up button twice and repeat for each edge. I don't even have to look at the timer. But I like being able to see the seconds so I don't end up giving myself a 1 second dodge/burn that is impossible to do reliably.
I doubt the differences of 1/24 stop vs. 0.1 stop between the two make much difference.