Patrick- The general concensus is to paint the darkroom walls white or off-white in order to reflect as much Safelight as possible. My darkroom happens to be yellow, because our house dates from the mid 70's, and when we bought it, everything that wasn't yellow paint was yellow shag. I converted a basement bedroom to a darkroom. and since the shade of yellow paint matched the safelight, I didn't repaint. In his book, "The Negative", Ansel Adams says, " A light color will make efficient use of the safelight illumination as well as providing a pleasant environment. I personally favor a rather light neutral color(about 70% reflectance) for walls and ceiling. White ceilings are best for the use of reflecting safelights, such as the highly efficient sodium units. However, walls near the enlarger should be flat black to minimize reflection of enlarger light onto the printing paper." When in doubt, imitate the very best! I gathered other resources when I built my darkroom, such as how to make sinks, drying racks, etc. Let me know if I can help. Bob Grant ----- Original Message ----- From: "Patrick Wiggins" <pwiggins@co.slc.ut.us> To: "utah astronomy listserve" <utah-astronomy@lists.xmission.com> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2002 2:07 AM Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Darkroom question
It occurs to me that there are more than a few astrophotographers on this list so I have a question for those folks.
I've decided to get my long neglected Schmidt camera out of mothballs which means I'm also going to have to do the same for my darkroom. So, I ask you, should the walls of a darkroom, to be used for B&W photography, be white or black or something in between?
Patrick :-)
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