When I set up my darkroom over 13 years ago I started with a clean slate; an open floorplan basement and no electrical fixtures in the corner where I wanted the darkroom. This allowed me to make a really clean looking minimalist lighting setup. I went to the home improvement supplier and bought a pair of ceiling mount two bulb dome fixtures. I wired the fixtures so that each of the two bulbs can be operated independently. In one socket of each fixture I use a 15 watt white lightbulb and in the other socket I use a 7 1/2 watt red utility lamp. I was planning on using the small red safelight bulbs available at Adorama and B&H for about $20 thirteen years ago but on one of my hardware store trips during the construction I found the red utility bulbs which look like the exact same shade of red as the safelight bulbs for $.20 each. I bought a whole bunch of them. I do not remember if I conducted any safelight test back then but most of my darkroom time was spent processing film and printing in color so I rarely used the safelights anyway.
After a ten year vacation from the darkroom and a total restoration of the darkroom last fall I am printing some black and white stuff I've accumulated over the years. I am using Ilford Multigrade RC Paper and Kodak Polycontrast filters. I was having a devil of a time with contrast. All of my negatives seem really contrasty to my eye but I was not getting satisfactory contrast with any filter below # 3 1/2. It was driving me nuts because I do not recall having to so aggressively manage contrast when I was using the school darkroom years ago. I then noticed after cutting some test strips that a few of the test strips and full prints which were all out in the safelight while I was cutting paper was grey where the white border from the easel is.
I did a informal safelight test by exposing a print exactly as one which yielded a nice print and then left the print on the easel. I placed a film processing tank on the exposed paper for five minutes to mask a circle. After another five minutes I added another tank to make another circle for an additional five minutes. I developed the print and I was dumbfounded at what I saw; The circle masked off by the first tank was properly exposed. The rest of the sheet was black, even the circle which got only five minutes of safelight after exposure. My safelights are anything but.
This raises a few questions:
Can red safelights be used with Ilford Multigrade paper?
Are my safelights really unsafe or am I expecting too much out of them in conducting my test?
I came across a safelight test on Kodak's website which seems like it should give me a definitive answer except I can't for the life of me make heads or tails out of what the steps are. Can somebody help me out with interpretation or offer another tried and true method of safelight exposure?
I would like to continue using my nice clean looking light setup. Does anybody sell OC colored safelight bulbs? The light fixtures are not big enough to accommodate the OC Jumbo bulbs available at B&H and Adorama.
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