Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
Howard Lester wrote:
Totally dark. I think the only film with which you can use a light bulb (a
red one, specifically) is orthochromatic, which is not red sensitive.

Kodak used to sell a dark green filter which could be used only for a
few seconds after development was half complete. I think it was designed
for panchromatic film, not color.

I toured the Kodak Kodachrome development lab in Fair Lawn, New Jersey
back when it was a serious operation. Probably in the late 1960s.

Note that Kodachrome came in speeds of 25 and 64. Later there was a 200
speed version in 120 if I remember correctly, but I never saw that. I
know that they had a dip and dumk machine for larger size film. I am
sure they no longer made it in sheets. Maybe that was for E-6.

Anyhow, some of the line operated in dim room light, but the beginning
was in a totally black dark room. There was one of those dark green
safelights in the top corner of the room, as far from the film loading
station as possible. It did not put out enough light to see anything. It
was just bright enough so when you dark-adapted you could see where it was.

They normally left it off, but when they hired a trainee, they would
turn it on just so the trainee could orient him or her self.

Once they loaded about 1000 feet of the stuff on a light-tight roll,
they closed the thing and passed it out through a light trap (double
door setup where only one door could be opened at a time). That was
stuck in the begin end of the line where it was washed, etc. Eventually
it got to where the re-exposures were done and the color couplers were
put in for three separate color development stages. You could see that,
though the room was not brightly lit. I think by that point, all silver
development was done and the remaining silver halide fixed out. They had
an analytical chemist and a sensitometrist on duty all the time. They
spliced a test strip after every so many customer rolls, and measured it
and balanced the chemistry replenishment rates based on the results of
those tests. They plotted the results over an extended interval so they
could see trends before they became a problem.

What amazed me was a separate line where the 1000 foot reels of
processed and dried film were mounted in those little cardboard mounts.
This was done by a team of women operating machines. Since each camera
has a different pitch between the frames, and some cameras have
irregular film advance mechanisms, this is done essentially by hand, but
these women were so good at it that they could do a roll amazingly fast.
The machine fed the new mounts, the yellow boxes where the slides went,
the mailing labels, and so on. It also advanced the film, but the
operator had a knob to align the edge of the frame with the edge of the
mount. When they got some images where they could not tell where the
edge of the frame was (too dark), they guessed (as far as I could tell).
That part of the room was well lit, and perhaps a little brighter than
normal. I bet they did not have to work an 8-hour shift though, because
they would probably become less alert than required. Perhaps then they
loaded film for processing or something.

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key:3EDBB65E 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 09:25:01 up 9 days, 16:26, 3 users, load average: 4.81, 4.77, 4.79