Elders and Betters!

I am nearsighted, my eyes never did work well in the dark, they are on their seventh decade, and spotting the sweep second hand on my watch is hit-or-miss. In order to keep paper in the developer for the requisite two minutes I need:

One small mechanical or battery powered timer.

Ideally the timer would emit a gentle "ding" or buzz at the end of two minutes. I cannot use my Gralab timer, which is hard-wired into a cold-light enlarger. I want something a tad more accurate than the classical egg-timer.

Any ideas on who could supply one of the above?

Many thanks!

Jeremy Keller

-- Jeremy Keller (Balkanbiker@hotmail.com), November 27, 2001

Answers

Jeremy,

Any department store or kitchen/housewares store will have a selction of digital cooking timers that will fit your needs. I am sure that you can even find one with large numbers.

Good luck,

-- Ed Farmer (photography2k@hotmail.com), November 27, 2001.

I came across my almost ideal development/fixer timer at an electronics store. It can be set so that it beeps, flashes a red led or both. I have it on 'flash only' mode as my son sleeps in the next room. Once the time is up and you press the 'ok' button, it resets back to whatever time you have in it. I do everything in multiples of that time, so pressing the button starts the timer, pressing it again stops it and resets and if I want more iterations it's just one more press of the button. One thing it doesn't do which another timer I use for timing prints in the wash does, is show you how much time it's been since the time was up, which would be nice but I don't find to much of a hinderance. The LCD display is a bit small (probably 10mm digits) but I never really look at it anyway, just wait for the LED to flash which means I'm not looking at a clock always waiting for that 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1...

-- Nigel Smith (nlandgl@unite.com.au), November 27, 2001.

I bought a second hand gra-lab 300 and mounted it over my sink. It's perfect for my needs. Just be sure you don't get the old metal style because the bell is too loud.

-- Andrew Held (Heldarc@yahoo.com), November 27, 2001.

Jeremy:

I finnaly found struck paydirt as I had been looking for just such a device.

I found a Radio Shack English Talking CountUp/Count Down timer, cat No 63-877. It has an LCD and of course can be set to talk with a synthesized female voice. It counts down and sounds teh remaining time on teh minute, then in teh last minute, every ten seconds then down from ten, then after teh time tells how far after.

It cost me $24 Canadian so about 16 US and uses cheap readily available batteries: Great.

Cheers

-- RICHARD ILOMAKI (richardjx@hotmail.com), November 28, 2001.

I also suggest Radio Shack. That's where I got the small electronic timer I use for developing film. I forget the model number, but at Radio Shack they salesperson will show you a bunch of different models. You can check out the size of the readout, and the "ding", which is an issue for my older set of ears.

-- Jeff Polaski (polaski@acm.org), November 28, 2001.

There are always a bunch of Gralab 300 timers available on Ebay. Several have sold recently for $30 or so, although others have gone for much higher. This is what you're familiar with, and although they seem to just run forever, if you had a second one on the developing side you'd have a spare in case your enlarger timer ever gave up.

The Gralab 300 is what I use on the wet side of my darkroom - actually two of them. One was my father's, which must be 50+ years old and has the bell (single ring at the end of the time - fairly loud, but then it's over) while the other one is the new model with the adjustable volume buzzer. I have one at the middle of the wet side where the paper developing tray usually sits, the other is at the sink where it's easier to set and see for developing film.

I actually prefer the bell model with its single ding, because the buzzer model just goes on and on, and even at its lowest setting is quite annoying if it goes on for any length of time. Sometimes I'm doing something else when the buzzer goes off - like framing and focusing a negative in the enlarger - and it isn't critical that I do something at the end of the time - like take a print out of the wash. I just want to know when the wash time is up, and a single bell is enough. The operating advantage of the bell model is that I can leave it "on" all the time and just click the minute hand over two minutes at the start of a print, which starts the timer running immediately. Then, if I want a bell to ring at the end, I just tap the bell button on the top (which I think cocks the bell mechanically) at any point before the time runs out. At the end of the time the bell goes off and the timer just sits, waiting to run again. With the buzzer model I'd have to set the minute hand then flip the timer switch to on, and I have to turn it off at the end in order to silence the buzzer.

On the whole, I find the bell model friendlier for paper timing. But the bell models are quite old, and I don't see them very often on Ebay (not that I look that hard for them, though.)

-- Kip Babington (cbabing3@swbell.net), November 28, 2001.

As a fan of low-tech solutions, I'm not normally one to tout high- tech gadgets with lots of bells and whistles. However, I swear by my Zone VI compensating developing timer. Yeah, it's a lot more expensive than the little wind-up egg timers, but it has LEDs that are large and bright enough to see at the other end of my darkroom sink and beeps every 30 seconds as well. There is also a dimmer setting for film developing, and brightness and loudness controls to fine tune it to your needs. The best thing, however, is the little temperature probe that goes in the developer tray and the accompanying chip in the unit that adjusts the length of the "seconds" depending on the temperature of the developer. No more worries about temperature drift, cold solutions in winter or warm in summer. This thing has relegated my thermometers to the drawer. Repeatable results at practically any reasonable temperature was worth the extra expense for me. Maybe you can find one on eBay for cheap. Hope this helps. ;^D)

-- Doremus Scudder (ScudderLandreth@compuserve.com), December 01, 2001.