Jonathon, Tom, others,
Before you all start commenting on how careful you all work. (And, I am
confident that we all are excellent technicians with alternative
processes.) You may wish to test if your ambient lighting is safe.
Do the following for two situations 1) in your typical ambient light; 2)
with a safelight safe for working with typical B&W silver papers.
Place some removable tape on paper normally used.
Coat as usual. (Be careful when drying not to let coating puddle near
edge of tape for this may influence results.)
Mark the edge of the tape with pencil dots.
Remove the tape.
Process through all processing steps as is typical.
After dry, examine. Look carefully along the pencil dots for any change
in value from the paper base. (you may even wish to use a magnifier.)
[NOTE: densitometers are useless because they do not have anywhere near
the sensitivity or accuracy to do this, but the eye does.]
Results:
A) both samples show no change in value from the paper base: Your
ambient light is OK. However, it is a good idea to retest if there is a
change in chemistry or paper or processing.
B) the ambient light sample has a discernible value (even if very
slight) and the safe light sample has no change in value: SORRY, your
ambient light is fogging your prints. Use a safelight. (sodium vapor
lamps work great)
C) both samples show a discernible value (even if very slight): The
sample prints have not cleared completely. The clearing bath (type and
time), paper, and coating chem should be adjusted so that complete
clearing occurs. Once complete clearing is achievable, retest, for it
is not known at this point if the lighting is safe.
If is highly unlikely that the safelight sample will have a value while
the ambient light sample does not. But if it does occur, I would
suggest starting over from scratch and being extra careful.
A bonus here is that this is also a test for clearing. Simply adjust
any variables Jeffrey.D.Mathias@worldnet.att.net (one at a time) and retest until complete clearing is
obtained.
Please, don't tell me about fogging or lack of it until this can be
substantiated with the above test.
Jeff
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