WATTS - Hot light, Cold Light

erie patsellis wrote:
John J wrote:
erie patsellis wrote:

Fer gosh sake, Erie, let's set up a studio and darkroom somewhere
between here and there, or maybe here. I am close to retirement.
Closer than I want to be.

If only the school had a good FA program, I might be tempted, the wife
graduates this year, and we were planning on moving to St. Louis, unless
I find a better program that will accept an old fart set in his ways,
and just looking for "artistic" guidance, instead of attempting to teach
me aperture, shutter speeds, here's how you develop b&w film, etc... fer
chrissake, I probably process more b&w & C41 film in any month than most
college labs do in a year.

I am replying here because this might be of interest to others.

Our state university, Winona State University (Minnesota) has a
positively wretched fine arts program. The current administration is
moving to an industrial education model. They are ripping the guts out
of the arts. The art department will have nothing whatsoever to do with
photography, at least one instructor is a chronic lazy ******* who never
shows up, and the only good instructor they have is retiring.


The department that covers photography has been financially crippled,
and the instructors are leaving.

I do not know about Winona's Saint Mary's University. Their program
might be good, but it's an expensive prospect where in the Arts their
goal is to collect money, hand out degrees.

You don't need a degree to practice or learn fine arts. But you know that.

erie patsellis wrote:


John,
my .02, for my enlargers (yet to be completed, due to lack of anywhere to put them) I'm
making a cold light head, basically 10-15mm neon tube, bent in a serpentine manner, quite
a bit larger than need be, 2 pieces of thin white acrylic and I will have a light source
that won't buckle negatives, and should give me decent exposure times. Basically a Aristo
head, Voltarc, the company that makes Aristo, happens to be a supplier to the neon
industry as well (no surprise, huh?

Properly processed neon tubes are bright as all get out, and using a Packard type
shutter(from a graphic arts camera, with a 110v solenoid)I can leave the tubes on
continuously, heck, maybe I'll add a few resistors in the cabinet to keep the lamp house
at a constant temperature as well.


erie

I am not sure you really want neon tube. Neon light is fairly monochromatic
and quite red to which photo paper is relatively insensitive. I would
suggest an argon or mercury tube with phosphors to convert the ultra-violet
into at least a blue and a green line to drive variable contrast paper. In
fact, if you insist on making yoru own, why not make to tubes, one blue and
one green. Then you can adjust the relative brightnesses of each and skip
the filters. Do you think you can make one of these for less than buying one
from Aristo?

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Jean-David Beyer wrote:
erie patsellis wrote:


John,
my .02, for my enlargers (yet to be completed, due to lack of anywhere
to put them) I'm making a cold light head, basically 10-15mm neon
tube, bent in a serpentine manner, quite a bit larger than need be, 2
pieces of thin white acrylic and I will have a light source that won't
buckle negatives, and should give me decent exposure times. Basically
a Aristo head, Voltarc, the company that makes Aristo, happens to be a
supplier to the neon industry as well (no surprise, huh?

Properly processed neon tubes are bright as all get out, and using a
Packard type shutter(from a graphic arts camera, with a 110v
solenoid)I can leave the tubes on continuously, heck, maybe I'll add a
few resistors in the cabinet to keep the lamp house at a constant
temperature as well.


erie

I am not sure you really want neon tube. Neon light is fairly
monochromatic and quite red to which photo paper is relatively
insensitive. I would suggest an argon or mercury tube with phosphors to
convert the ultra-violet into at least a blue and a green line to drive
variable contrast paper. In fact, if you insist on making yoru own, why
not make to tubes, one blue and one green. Then you can adjust the
relative brightnesses of each and skip the filters. Do you think you can
make one of these for less than buying one from Aristo?

Neon, per se, is red. However, there are various phosphors, that when the tube is mercury
loaded prior to tipping off, will give you any shade of the rainbow, and about 20
different whites, at least the last time I bent neon a few years ago. Most sign and neon
tube benders refer to the entire class of bent tubing with phosphors (or not) as "neon"

erie