I'm doing thiocarbamide toning of prints, and need tray heaters to insure consistent temperatures. Anyone have a resource they can recommned? Thanks.

-- ALLEN BIRNBACH (allenb@indra.com), January 15, 2001

Answers

I've used an aquarium heater stuck in the tray. I guess ideally you would want a pump to circulate the water around - I just used to swirl the water around with my hand. Check out agricultural supplies - some of them make tray heaters that basically look like mats which does sound perfect(e.g., http://www.ken-bar.com/gardener.html). You might want to make sure that is safe around water, though (although one would think that it should be given that plants get watered). Hope this helps. Cheers, DJ.

-- N Dhananjay (ndhanu@umich.edu), January 16, 2001.

If you can live with 140F MINIMUM temperature, a food warming tray might work for you.

-- Chris Ellinger (ellinger@umich.edu), January 16, 2001.

What I did for a heated tray: Get a stainless steel tray, B&H has them. Get a Thermofoil heater from Minco (order a catalog 612-571- 3121). This is a flexible sheet with a heating element and an adhesive layer. I built my own controller but you can wire in a lamp dimmer.

-- Tim Brown (brownt@flash.net), January 18, 2001.

I processed E-6 for years in a Unicolor film drum with solutions kept up to temp in a tray with an acquarium heater. Worked fine. In 1993, when my associate and I were shooting baseball card photos, we processed hundreds of rolls with excellent, consistent results. (But we had to hire a girl to help us sleeve the strips of films and cut out, mount, and caption the selects.) We later got a King Concepts 2000 processor, which was more convenient, but not better.

Now that I've closed the studio and no longer have the processor, I think I'll go back to the Unicolor drum and tray.

-- Dave Jenkins (djphoto@vol.com), January 23, 2001.

Thanks to all for the help. In the end I found an aquarium heater that will lay flat in the tray ( initially I only found ones and attached to the top of a tank and hung down, and wouldn't work).

Now I'm on to fighting the toning demons.

-- ALLEN BIRNBACH (allenb@indra.com), January 30, 2001.