Smart Lighting and Darkrooms
Do Smart Home Lights Work as Safe Lights in a Photography Darkroom?
After many years of using the Safelight Jr, and not being able to see very much in my darkroom, I have been wanting to start using a color changing smart home light bulb. The problem with this is they are very expensive $50+ dollars for the Philips Hue; which is the one that works with my smart home set up and there is no guarantee that the light will not transmit truly safe frequencies, or be too bright even on the lowest setting. So for quite some time I have been searching for answers on the internet, but either no one is asking the same questions I am or the answers I found are "should work if...". These results did not work for me, so I finally broke down and purchased Philips Hue 60 watt and put it to the test.
Testing Method
I wanted to make sure that the light would be safe and still be bright enough for me to see so I set up the tests to push the paper to its limit under different brightness levels so I left the paper out under the light for 5 minutes at each brightness setting which is longer than I would normally leave my paper exposed before developing. I then developed the paper for 2 minutes, used Kodak stop bath and then fixed for 1 minute. The paper was placed 9 ft. from the light source. Below are the light, paper, developer and light control app I used for my testing:
Light: Philips Hue White and Color Ambiance BR30 LED 65W Equivalent Dimmable Smart Wireless Flood Light Bulb with Bluetooth
Paper: Ilford Multigrade Fiber and Ilford Multigrade RC Pearl
Developer: Ilford Multigrade Paper Developer mixed at 14:1
Light app: Amazon Alexa: color: default red setting
Settings and Results
I wanted to give give the light the best chance to fog the paper if it was going to happen, but I also wanted to see what the optimal setting would be if the light worked at all. I started at the lowest setting, 10 percent brightness and doubled the brightness to 20 and then 40 percent and finally 80 percent. There was significant fogging at 80 percent so I lowered it back down to 50 percent. As a reminder I exposed the paper at each setting for 5 minutes from 9 ft away.
10 percent: At this brightness there was no fogging, but the visibility was only a minimal improvement over the Safelite Jr.
20 percent: Once again there was no noticeable fogging on the paper, This time however, the visibility was starting to improve enough for me to be able to be happier.
40 Percent: At 40 percent the visibility was great, and there was still no fogging on the paper even though I did see a couple of speckling spots on the fiber paper and a very dark line on the edge of the RC paper. I would chalk these anomalies up to the paper seeing some other light source.
50 percent: I loved this visibility level, but I started to see paper fogging. At 50 percent there was definite graying; while just above paper white it is still darker than what I would accept on my prints. I also developed half the strip after 2.5 minutes and let the other half exposed for the remainder of the 5 minutes.
80 percent: As expected from the 50 percent results, the 80 percent fogged the paper significantly. The other problem I discovered was slightly unexpected. While I did not turn on my enlarger with film in it the brightness in the room would have made viewing the image on the enlarger base significantly harder.I also put half the paper in the developer at 2.5 minutes and the other half at 5 minutes as I did at 50 percent brightness.
Conclusions
While your results may very depending on the paper you are using, the quality of the smart home bulb you use (I recommend one that is true RGB in order to get a true red light spectrum), and the proximity of the light to the paper (the farther the better) I would say that with a brightness setting between 30- 40 percent and exposure times kept to a minimum using a smart home light bulb is well worth the investment over a Safelight Jr or going through the trouble of buying a more traditional setup, which can be more expensive than the smart home light. Plus you have the advantage of being able to switch to a white light after you are done printing so you can reduce the amount of stuff you have in your darkroom , and if your anything like me space comes at a premium.
