Today I was testing Helios 44-2 lens on my enlarger and it seems to work fine. I still have to carefully inspect the prints, but I’m pretty sure they are much much sharper. One problem is that red filter holder, that i removed red glass from and use it as contrast filters holder, doesn’t fit under the lens anymore. It seems that easy fix is to just slap the contrast filter right on the condenser lens. I don’t see a problem.
By the way, new condenser lens assembly is on the way, fingers crossed. Also some enlarger lenses are on the way. I’m on the mission to put this enlarger together to proper printing machine.
But today’s post is about an android app, that I use to measure times in darkroom. In another post i ranted about how I hate touchscreens and that is still true, but this free app makes the smartphone use bearable (I still want to have physical timer, but this might work in the meantime). Today I used it for the second time without problems so I figured I tell you about it. It’s name is Foto Timer, it’s open source and you can grab it on f-droid.
Main appeal of this app is, that you can chain timers one after another to start automatically, so you basically need to touch the phone only once through the whole dev-stop-fix process – on the beginning. Than all three timers run themselves according to how you set them up. In my case – 90 seconds dev -> 10 seconds pause -> 20 seconds stop -> 10 seconds pause -> 90 seconds fix. Done. Pretty easy.
Setting and chaining timers is pretty intuitive and nicely done. I like it. And it has nice dark theme and nice red dark font, so it doesn’t fog your precious papers. Well done and thanks Jan.
