Stainless steel in the darkroom

[bmikiten]

I'm building a new darkroom (#4) and have used stainless steel shelving in the past but am considering using it exclusively for storage of chemicals and other items which would me a wall of shelves. The enlarger has baffles around it and the sink is epoxy coated. Has any one had reflectivity issues with stainless? I taught at a local school once where the department head would not allow stainless in the room. I don't see any real issues but thought I'd ask for horror stories before I make the purchases.

Thanks

[Drew Wiley]

Just depends on how close it is to the enlarger, and if reflections can bounce back onto the baseboard when printing. Helps to have adjustable negative stage masking to prevent stray light, as well as dark wall paint. In principle, I don't like anything shiny or bright adjacent to an enlarger. Frankly, I don't like the idea of having an enlarger even in the same room as a sink, chemicals, and humidity. But do the best you can to block stray light. It shouldn't be a major problem when printing onto papers which are relatively slow. But if you also plan to enlarge onto film, to make scaled-up negatives, you need to be especially careful.

[Don Dudenbostel]

Take a good incident light meter and try to measure any light bouncing around the room. I don’t think you’ll be able to detect any. I’ve worked in darkrooms with stainless sinks and backsplash, white walls and black walls and never had an issue. I have white walls in mine and there are no problems.

[bmikiten]

My last one had a mix of black paint (around the enlarger - a Durst 1200) and the controls passed through the baffle on the left (or right) and I never had issues. The rest of the room was high-end cabinetry and I'm probably not doing that again since the open storage was actually most useful and I ended up taking the doors off. I agree with the stainless sinks - I've not seen that as a big issue since I was always in front of the paper when printing anyway.

[Drew Wiley]

Incident meters? - no way those are sensitive enough for detecting potential trouble. One's own eyes are better, that is, after they've thoroughly adjusted to the darkness after twenty minutes or so. Something I do when suspicious is to temporarily cover the shiny steel columns of my various Durst enlarger chassis with either black studio flocking or matte rubber sheeting. I keep a few small rolls of it handy. And my Durst baseboards have been re-laminated with black Formica; likewise countertops. That especially helps when I use the L138 enlarger alternately as a copy stand. Anything shiny nearby like the column itself is likely to reflect right onto the copy work, especially if it is itself shiny like a Ciba or Supergloss print being copied. Better safe than sorry. Also have to think about the brightness of my own clothing. Overkill? - certainly not for some things; but again, ordinary black and white printing is a lot less worrisome in that respect.

[wclark5179]

I keep my liquid chemicals in cabinets so as they are in the dark and relatively constant cool temps. I store my stock solutions using empty 2 liter soda bottles. The cap works sealing the bottle over and over and the plastic doesn’t react with the chemicals I use including color C-41 and
Black and white.

Have you looked at getting synthetic composition shelves?


My two cents!

[Tin Can]

Perhaps some remember my difficulty with my old DR, the big one

My eyes were flashing internally and I was chasing 'light'

I now seal any possible light, even imaginary

I also sit for 20 minutes in meditation to calm my foolish vision