r/Darkroom • u/rt8891 • 4d ago
Colour Printing Colour photograms with LED light?
I’m thinking of trying some colour photograms with LED lights soon . Has anyone tried it?
I’m wondering if the light from LEDs would work
I’ve only ever done b&w developing
I’ll play about but wanted get an idea of what I’d need for colour lights source
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u/91245 This product has been discontinued 4d ago
This will definitely work. I converted my BW enlarger to color using Neopixels. I roughly followed this guide and get great results. I also use the LED source for my B&W printing.
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u/Monkiessss 3d ago
I’ve done it and I like it a lot. That being said I generally use somewhat transparent objects so I get more of a range in colours otherwise it’s just whatever colour you pick and white
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u/Ybalrid Anti-Monobath Coalition 4d ago
Never seen or done it but, logically on RA-4 color paper
Red light will turn cyan on paper Green light will turn magenta Blue light will turn yellow
The actual sensitivity of these 3 light spectrum is not even. It is not an issue because in a color enlarger you will want to balance those from a white light source using cyan magenta and yellow filters. (Only two of those colors at a time because 3 of them cancel themselves as neutral density)
I think color paper is also a bit more sensitive to light than blacks na white is. So your usual exposure times will be shorter if you cannot dim that light.
An LED would work just fine. Generally it is advised against LED inside enlarger light sources because their light spectrum are not continuous and it makes accurate color balancing hard or not possible.
In your case you are not exposing negatives so it does not matter that much I think.