Lighting for Dark Room

[ewolfe3]

I need to build a darkroom for our lab's experiment. We're using a 15 watt pump and will probably be around 3 watts coming out hitting the sample. Our primary wavelengths will be around 800nm and 400nm. We need to light the room housing the experiment with a light source that will not interfere with the results. Will I be able to simply use a fluorescence filter, say yellow or green, over an everyday white light, or is something else called for?

 

[HIMNL9]

If you are using 400 and 800nm for the experiments, probably a light source at half this range (around 600nm or similar) will not interfer with it ..... especially if you keep it dimmed .....

Normal filters don't work so good, but there are photographic filters that are a decent possible solution ..... or, in alternative, finding some "neon" lamps (the orange ones), that are emitting in a band decently tight (almost monochromatic) ..... they don't lit too much, but for see what you're doing, some of them can be enough .....

but NOT those fluorescent lamps that emit red/orance light for the warning signs, these are not monochromatics ..... i mean pure neon lamps ..... in the worse case, i think a "neon sign maker" can build a big one for you, on request .....

 

[ewolfe3]

I'm also looking into possibly using LEDs. From what I've seen they have a fairly narrow bandwidth too. Probably orange or yellow.

 

[HIMNL9]

Yes, leds are a good choice too ..... i was wondering about a big room, and not considered them, sorry.

 

[ewolfe3]

Awwww. No, the area we would need to light would be fairly small, and comparable to lighting a small walk-in closet, maybe 10ft x 8ft. We really only need the light to be able to tell where the optics is so we don't accidentally bump it, as opposed to calibration, which we'll do in full light.

 

[ewolfe3]

Also, thanks for the fast responses!!!

 

[Cyparagon]

I'd get a few yellow LEDs.