How to make a UV LED Exposure box

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Up close on the UV LED exposure box

UPDATE

I made this box about a year ago and after 1 years use, I am not sure I would still recommend doing this. I went to add some more lights to the unit this week and noticed that the lights, which have a plastic waterproof coating over them had yellowed and that the new lights which were the same as the original were much brighter. I read the reviews of the LEDS on Amazon and a lot of people complained about the same thing. They only thing I can think of is to use LEDS without the waterproof cover and that are of better quality.

I have a Nuarc 40-1K and an fluorescent exposure box I made and decided that I needed something quieter, cooler and less power hungry so I made a UV LED exposure box. I put this information together from these two links:

http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?122508-LED-UV-Light-Box-Build-Your-Own-for-Under-150

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLia59KfkSw

Before we start, I am not an electrician and you do this at your own risk.

The video is an excellent source for some of what you need and how to wire it. The process I did required soldering. I learned how to solder a long time ago and it’s really not hard. You may be able to do it without soldering but I do not trust the long-term ability of the clips to keep the connection. I created a really large UV light box at about 30x36 inches but it’s easier if you do something like 20x24. I made mine that large to fit over the vacuum frame I have.

The UX exposure box I made gives me a maximum black at about 12 minutes with Fixxons transparency material that I use for my digital negatives. Right now, the height is about 4 inches from the negative. This may change but it doesn’t really matter much if it is 4 or 6 inches. The LED strips are 3/8ths of an inch wide and I centered them on an inch strip (30 inches for 30 strips). The video shows the lights really stacked on top of each other, but so far I have gotten pretty even light with some space in-between. I also staggered where they begin and end so that the coverage is more even and not just strips of LEDS horizontally. The video does a good job of explaining this. You do not need the battery or the extra stuff he shows in the video, just the power transformer.

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Results from a 10 minute exposure using the UV LED exposure box. It could use a couple more minutes. 

When you cut the LED strips, make sure it is between the two copper points (about every three LEDs). Make sure all the strips go in the same direction. How can you tell? Well when you line them up, you will see at the ends of the LED strips, two copper dots, one negative and one positive. The ends should match, so for instance all the negative copper terminals should be on the top and the entire positive terminal on the bottom. This way it makes it easy to line up and solder. You are going to take the 12 AWG wire (basically speaker wire) and have it go through holes you have to make in the center of the short sides. The speaker wire is a paired wire, one wire to go to the top and one to go towards the bottom. It doesn’t matter which is which. Start on one side and strip the red and black off so that it reaches just past the leds. Give it about an inch from the top of the LEDS. Staple this down and start soldering the small copper wire to each one. For the one side you want the negatives and the other side the positives. You do not do all of them on both sides.

Once you are done, test with the power supply. You should have three positive and three negative connections on the power supply.  The one 12 AWG cord (with the red and black cord inside) from the right should go into the positive connections on the power supply and the one cord from the left should go into the two negative terminals. Which side doesn’t matter as much as long as the wires soldered to the negative side of the LED terminal is plugged into the negative connection on the power supply; same with the positive. Then connect the power cable, black is live, white is neutral and green is ground. Plug it in and step back. The lights take about 2 seconds to turn on. Once it is all working, flip the board over and attach the power supply to the board and you are done.

I have saved everything I have used into a wish list from Amazon or you can check out the links individually below.

Wishlist
http://amzn.com/w/2HOSLC2PAO93S

I will keep updating this with more images and better directions as this process evolves. 

Here is a schematic I made: 

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UV LED Exposure Box Schematic from underneath. Click to view larger size.

Power supply – can power 5 reels of lights at a time (Shipping says it will take a month but I got it in two days)
http://www.amazon.com/Lemonbest-Power-Transformer-Lighting-billboards/dp/B00NHDYMG0/ref=sr_1_72?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1432303393&sr=1-72&keywords=led+power+supply

UPDATE: I would also strongly suggest getting a plastic ABS box and drill some holes in it for ventilation.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005T990I0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Connect led strips together
http://www.amazon.com/Connector-Single-Color-Strip-Adaptor/dp/B0085ZX8EM/ref=pd_sim_60_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1A8TXKYN14J7DC1AP0VG

OOK 50162 20 Gauge, 50ft Copper Hobby Wire
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000WC8ULM?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

Check update at top: Wit-Lighting 16.4ft 5050 LED Strip UV Purple 395nm-405nm 5M 300 SMD Flex Light Waterproof IP65 12V DC DC 12V 5A for 5M 300LED light strip Viewing Angle : 120° Wavelength:395-405nm Long life span 50,000+ hours (Shipping says it will take a month but I got it in two days) This is what I used, but would not recommend, they turn yellow and lose brightness in a year.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MRJ0AB6?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00

500w DC12v Output Switching Power Supply Adapter Non-waterproof LED Driver transformer for LED Strip Light (for reels of 6 or more) 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MPBT9N6?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00

Power Cord
http://www.amazon.com/Superior-Electric-EC123-Feet-Electrical/dp/B002S9J5I4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1453911246&sr=8-2&keywords=12awg+power+tool+replacement+cord
Cmple 12 AWG CL2 Rated 2-Conductor Loud Speaker Cable for In Wall Installation (White, 100')

12AWG Copper Speaker Wire
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1008537-REG/cmple_681_n_12_awg_cl2_rated.html
 

Sony A7RII Photos

I recently acquired the Sony A7RII and I have not had much time to use it yet, but so far I love the photos. It takes some getting used to a full frame camera. I usually shot APSC or Micro 4/3rds, both great for what they do when you need environmental portraits and want everything in focus (I know, crazy right, but their was a time before the bokeh craze that photographers wanted to have everything in focus). So here are a few test shots while I finish reading the manual.

Greg

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Sony A7RII with the Sony Distagon T* FE 35mm f/1.4 ZA Lens

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Sony A7RII with the Sony Distagon T* FE 35mm f/1.4 ZA Lens

Behold Blog

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The Persistence of Steel

This past Sunday, I was honored to have a piece about "The Iron Triangle" series posted on the Behold blog on Slate by David Rosenberg. Check it out here.

Printing a Portfolio

I am currently getting ready for the Palm Springs Photo Review at PhotoExpo by printing out "The Iron Triangle" Series. I am using a printer on loan from my friend Antoon at Uptown Fine Art Printing Studios. The way I am doing it is a bit strange to print them but is really easy to do.

The printer is pretty big and doesn't really fit in my office so I have it set up in the basement plugged into an old Power PC G5 that I connect to wirelessly. I edit the photos on my 2011 iMac and connect to the G5 using the Share screen feature of OSX. I also connect to the computer like I would to a server. This allows me to transfer files to the G5 so that I have them in one location and if I need to make changes, I can with then iMac and save them. I then open them in CS3 on the G5 and hit print.  

There are many advantages of doing it this way. I don't have to have the printer next to me. Having a computer dedicated to printing only means I can save all the setting without worrying that maybe I changed the gamma or color profile. Many times after printing, even if I saved the settings, I would go and print another image the next day only to find out that some setting defaulted back to the original. I am talking about things like the platen gap defaulting back to normal. With the Epson printers, I set the platen gap to wide or wider, otherwise the head hits the paper and causes streaks of ink. I am also more familiar with the way Adobe CS3 prints on a Power PC. After Adobe CS3 and the Intel Macs were released, something changed in the way images printed and I had trouble getting the images to like they used to.

I have printed out about half of the 26 images and so far have only had to make adjustments to 3 images and reprint them. I am getting used to telling how the image will look once printed. I am printing out in Black and White with a slight sepia tone and I judge everything by the numbers to see if the image is within the tonal range of the printer. 

It is really great to see the images all printed out in a 16x20 inch size, recommended to me by Jennifer Schwartz from Crusade for Arts and David Bram from Fraction Magazine. I was going to mount them onto a mat board, but Jennifer and David suggested not too. Once I saw the prints I realized as well how big and heavy it would be. 

Calibrating a NuArc 26-1K or 40-1K

For making platinum prints, I normally use a NuArc 40-1K with a vacuum frame. It's the same as the 26-1K except the vacuum frame is larger. The 26 is for the size of the vacuum frame, 26 inches. While trying to calibrate my exposures, I was having a hard time getting good exposures. 100 units would take 4 minutes. I read on the Yahoo Carbon Printing Group about calibrating them to  get the exposure closer to 1 unit = 1 sec. I contacted Israel Martinez from M&R Print ( http://www.mrprint.com 800-736-6431). He walked me through the steps of what to do. I am just passing along information and take no responsibility if you damage your unit or electrocute yourself, so proceed with caution.

First step is to unplug the unit and then remove the lid of the exposure unit. 

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Side view with the lid off

In this side view, the front of the unit is to my left. What you see above is the lamp and the Photocell. The Photocell measures the amount of light coming from the lamp and shuts the unit off when it has reached the limit of what was set. There are three ways to adjust this to make it more sensitive. The first is to angle down the sensor. You will have to play with it, but I adjusted mine here to angle down by about 5 degrees. It doesn't take much.

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The red line is where you set the aperture to.

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This is what it looks like with the aperture wheel off.

The second way is to adjust the aperture on the front of the Photocell. 1 is the most sensitive and 11 being the least. You can see a swirl on the face, that is what controls the amount of light hitting the sensor. Unscrew just a little, the screw in the middle and adjust it by turing it to match the red mark. It is usually set at 5, I set mine at 1.

The third way to adjust it is to go to the front panel and adjust the resistor. IT is a blue square box with a white plastic screw on the inside. First you want to turn to all the way counter clockwise to as far as it will go and mark that with a sharpie. That makes it less sensitive. Then turn it all the way clockwise until it stops and mark that. This makes it the most sensitive. Now turn it back counter clockwise until it is about center between the two and check it. I would caution not to set it too far clockwise, it may strain the system itself. 

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Front of case with the resistor

My particular problem was caused by a melted aperture disc. Mine was pretty old and had many years of use and over time, the aperture wheel that protects the sensor from the light clouded up. If you are having problems, I would check this first. The part itself cost $22, but M&R have a $25 dollar minimum and they charge about $14 for shipping so it costs about $40 in the end. It's pretty cheap to replace compared to the rest of the parts. The new and old dials.

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The new and the old aperture dials.

I put it in this morning, tested it and it was a little faster than 1 to 1 so I will have to slow it down a little. Thanks again to Israel Martinez from M&R Print, they have always been very helpful. 

The Fading of Eternity

I recently finished Sally Manns book “Hold Still”. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and highly recommend it. Some of what she talks about is the ability of photographs to corrupt our memories, something I have been thinking a lot about lately myself. The idea began at the Flash Powder Retreat and I have been noticing more people write about memory in how it relates to what we are seeing with Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Hold Still talks about how the photograph corrupts your memories of what happened, they are just a small sliver in time. For instance, if the only photo of me that survives me is one of me snarling and in a bad mood, will my great grandchild look at that and think I was an angry person? Maybe I am smiling because I am an evil bastard and did something bad. They are not very accurate depictions of people and their true nature.

The blog, Thoughts of a Bohemian Photographer talks about how photos are used throughout time. In the past, photos were taken to compensate for our poor memories of people, things and events we did in the era of Kodak. We would remember the photos better than the actual event, something Sally Mann and Paul Melcher talk about. With digital and Facebook, it became photos of things I am doing or eating, more a form of communication to show a highly curated view of my life. Look at the wonderful vacation I am on, the great food I am eating, and the cool people I am with. Now we have Instagram, where people are using it as a way to directly communicate. A Selfie of a sad face or even more directly, text over the image with apps like Over to express themselves because writing just takes too long. A photo of my food, regardless of whether it is a gourmet meal or a bowl of cheerios. In all of these things, image quality is not important as long as the information is there.

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We have a generation of people who are becoming the most visually sophisticate audience ever. So many images are taken that most will not even be remembered or for that matter stored. They are constantly bombarded with images and they still want more. They also have the biggest risk of losing all of their photos, a whole generation wiped out due to outdated hardware, failures and lack of physical prints.

I grew up in a generation that used Polaroids for everything. The idea on an instant image was an amazing concept at that time. I guess that is why I have had such a connection to them lately. I have been working on a project for quite a few years using film from the Impossible Project. A lot of the film at that time was experimental and quite often faded or degenerated. I had scanned most of them before that happened, but two events in my life recently have made me take the project in a different way. The first was moving to Brooklyn. I had not looked at the Polaroids in a long time and while unpacking I noticed how much most of them have degraded. The second event was the passing of my Uncle Jim. Before his funeral I was trying to find images of him that I had in family albums. I was looking through a lot of old family photos and I noticed something as well. How the photos I saw represented a different reality than what existed, basically what Sally Mann was talking about. In my life, how could I go through life and not see something was wrong with what was right in front of me the whole time. Most of my work concentrates on the external world around me; the next series will be more internal.

What to Write About

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I have never considered myself to be a great writer. I had recently went to a workshop (Flash Powder Projects which I highly recommend) to help advance my career as a photographer. The two people who run it, Jennifer Schwartz and David Bram stressed the need to write and write often, so here it goes.

Lately I have been working on building my darkroom and I think I finally have it in a state that is ready to use. The only problem is that the weather is too hot and humid for Carbon printing and Platinum printing so I have to wait. After years of trying to establish a place to do my work it can be frustrating to have to wait. I am trying to learn Carbon Printing on my own, with the help of Sandy Kings Carbon group on Yahoo, but so far it has been a disaster. A good one though, I have learned a lot.

I recently read an article in Time about the resurgence of film, I have been shooting with film since 1995 as well as with digital cameras, but I am really in love with being able to combine them in my workflow. Basically I am shooting film, scanning and then making contact prints in Carbon or Platinum. Two months ago, I acquired a free Nuarc 40-1k print that will technically make contact prints up to 30x40 inches. People often ask me where I get these things, I built my darkroom for about $300, and my answer is patience and Craigslist. Everything eventually ends up on Craigslist, a lot of times for free.

I have been talking with Carl Weese who taught me platinum printing and some of the issues that have been plaguing us lately. The problem comes from the fact that our favorite paper, Magnani Revere is no longer being made, or at least made in the way it was before. Quite often, paper companies change the way they make the paper and do no disclose it. Things like adding sizing can really change the way it works for platinum printing. The fall back paper for Carl is Arches Platine which is a standard in the platinum printing world, but again, they have made a change and the paper tends to bleed if you don’t add Tween to it. If you add too much Tween, the image will have streaks. I use Bergger Cot 320 which for most people is expensive (I get a discount because I work at B&H Photo so the price is the same as Platine) The Cot 320 is highly recommended by Christoper James in his wonderful manual - The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes I have not printed in a while, but it doesn’t seem to bleed or at least not as much a Platine. I am also going to test some Fabrino Artistico soaked in a Oxaclic acid bath to remove the sizing. I like using Fabrino Artistico in many of my other processes as well so it would be great to be able to have one go to paper and buy it in bulk.

One of the benefits of working at B&H Photo is having access to the photo library. I can borrow most of the cameras, lenses and a whole bunch of equipment we sell for two weeks. This allows me to test a whole range of cameras. I have been lucky enough to try the Sony A7 Mark II with a 35mm and 55mm lens - I had trouble focusing. The Samsung NX1 with a bunch of lenses - the 85mm is incredible. The nikon D610 and D800 with the 24-70mm lens - way too heavy for me. An Olympus OMD EM1 with just about all of the lenses that are made for it. My main digital camera is the Panasonic GX7 which after just a year and a half has broken. I would highly suggest you do not buy Panasonic, their customer service is terrible and did not offer much help. It’s a shame because I really loved the camera, but I think it’s time for a more durable professional camera. I am leaning towards the Sony A7RII. I was able to try most of the Panasonic lenses and I will post some images from all these cameras and lenses soon. These are just my person opinions based on limited use and I don’t want to turn this site into a camera review blog. I feel that if you are a good photographer, you can make great photos with any camera, it’s just that some make it easier and are more intuitive to people which is highly subjective. I do not shoot sports so the need of an optical viewfinder and 10 FPS are not high on my list. A camera that doesn’t scare people when I point it at them is important to me.

Thats it for now.

Greg 

Check Out the Long Beard on This Guy

Some of you may know that I work as a designer for B&H Photo and one of the benefits is I get to borrow all kinds of cameras and lenses. This week I borrowed the Nikon D610. I usually use a Panasonic GX7 micro 4/3rd camera and I forgot how big and bulky DSLRs are. I have also shot with the new Sony A7 II and I will write about that as well. 

Eni and I went for a walk today through our neighborhood of Crown Heights. We walked past this guy who I think was selling fragrant oils. I asked if I could take his photo and he was a bit shocked that I would want to. I told him he has an interesting face. As I got ready to take the photo he said to wait one second and he pulled his really long beard out of his shirt.  I couldn't believe it.

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