Who the heck said he did his best Darkroom work with a bottle of Blackjack? My hat's off to him; with only had a toddy of Laphroig, I still make a lot of silly errors. Like punching the timer with the lens at f2.8 instead of f8.

This time of the year, hard to get the Darkroom up above 15C. It's a bit cold here. So even though I start with water at 23C, by the time I get to making prints, the temp is down to 18, and going fast. Is there a temp. conversion chart for Ilford chemicals, showing times for temperatures below 20C? Better yet, is there an interpolation that I could use? I am running Multigrade IV paper, with Multigrade developer. Thanks for that, cheers.

-- Paul Nelson (clrfarm@comswest.net.au), September 07, 2001

Answers

Anyone is free to contradict me here, but my understanding is that print developers work to completion--that is, they don't operate by the same time/temperature rules as film developers, but rather go until they're done, and then they don't do any more. So in that sense, the temperature doesn't affect much. However, speaking as someone who once had a darkroom in a house heated by wood heat to 60 degrees F, tops, you need to find a way to get those degrees up, or you're never going to get the blacks you want. I used to run an electric space heater in my darkroom/bathroom when I was printing. Since the room was so small, the temperature got up to reasonable pretty fast, and it was a good investment.

-- Michael Darnton (mdarnton@hotmail.com), September 07, 2001.

I know this isn't answering your question but I found the best way around the problem is to buy a tray-warmer.

-- sam smith (Ruy_Lopez@hotmail.com), September 07, 2001.

I have a friend who tell me that he goes into the darkroom at 10:00AM in the morning with 1 neg, a pack of 25 sheets of paper and a fifth of Jack Daniels. He claims he comes out 5 or 6 hours later with an empty bottle, an empty pack of paper and one perfect print. The problem is that the first or second print is the one he keeps and the rest are all downhill from there. Another story, this one I know to be true! One of the Antartic research teams used this 'receipe' to develop their film (Tri-X). Room temp - just below freezing. D-76 cut with, of all things (yes, this is true), antifreeze!!?? Dev time about 1.5 hours. I can only imagine what the film looked like, but the prints weren't half bad.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), September 08, 2001.

Get a tray warmer, or, put your dev tray in a larger tray with warm water. The hydroquinone in the developer is not active at low temperatures (below 60 deg. F, I think).

-- Steve Wiley (wiley@accesshub.net), September 09, 2001.

What's a tray warmer?

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), September 09, 2001.

In the winter, I'm able to cope with cold water temperatures by mixing with warm water, and by placing the developer tray in a water bath. I put the water bath into the wooden darkroom sink which I built myself, but a larger tray would work just as well.

My problem is how to keep the temperature down to 68 degrees in August, when the water is coming out of the faucet at 83. Ice cubes, or pre-cooling chemicals in the fridge, helps. Getting a constant supply of cool running wash water is another matter. I'm thinking of experimenting with putting a four or five gallon jug in a small fridge, mounted near the basement ceiling, and letting a slow stream of wash water flow into a tray from there. It shouldn't take all that much water to get a good wash, what with Hypo clearing agent and resin-coated papers.

Any ideas? Comments?

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), September 09, 2001.

Paul:

I agree with the statement that the developers do not work at low temperatures. I also have an old Morgan & Morgan Photo-Lab Index and they did cut the developer with antifreeze for low temperature work. I toyed around with the idea of using an electronic refrigerator that heats and cools with a fish tank filter for a continuous water circulation bath. This idea was actually for use with fish in a non- airconditioned house in 23 degree weather, but it would work equally well as an emmersion bath for photo chemicals. I would not use this with film as the temperature shock would mottle the image on the film if all of the chemicals are not close to the same temperature. For film, the Kodak Darkroom Dataguides have a calculator for different temperatures for film (a modified circular sliderule). My Morgan & Morgan does not give time/temperature curves for paper. According to M&M Hydroquinone loses effectiveness below 50 f (10 c) unless specially formulated. I found a M&M reference to the formulation, but it is not in my volume. A film reference says to use a high activity developer preferably based on a caustic solution of two powerful agents, amidol and catechol. This was published in 1971 by Eastman Kodak.

Good Luck

Mark J.

-- Mark A. Johnson (logic@gci.net), September 11, 2001.