“red light illuminated” darkroom with special filter (not red) in overhead light. Courtesy of Douglas Whitaker at English Wikipedia
Toronto. In the days of analogue (film) photography seasoned photographers knew their way around a darkroom – often having one. Photographic paper was usually insensitive to red so it was common in movies or on TV to see darkrooms in red light festooned with drying or developing prints.
When the use of multigrade papers became popular, safe lights became a ‘dirty yellowish, brownish’ colour, but the fad for red light in popular media remained. With colour photographic paper, this changed. Any visible light would ruin the paper and light-tight drums took over. The average soul reverted to chains (Eddie Black’s, Japan Camera) offering processing and small prints (4×6) in an hour.
Now-a-days we use digital cameras and print images on an inkjet printer in full daylight – or just leave them on hard drives as digital files. Computer or smartphone apps like Affinity Photo or Adobe Lightroom ‘develop’ the digital image correcting light balance, saturation, etc.. You can read more about the film safelight here.
