Safelight for the computer

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If you find yourself needing to take your laptop into the lab, you can make life simpler by making a safelight cover for the screen.

I know most of you who make holograms don’t carry around a tablet and those who carry around one probably don’t make holograms but for others who, like me, do both, here’s a way to take the computer into the lab without having to turn the screen off while film is out and about and you can save your "night" vision for what is probably a dimly lit lab.

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In this case I’m using Roscolux Fire gel sheets since I’m currently using green sensitive film. For red sensitive film I recommend Roscolux Chroma Green.  Hans on the Holography Forum has been using a Deco led yellow lighting for Fuji film and you may be able to find a suitable yellow film from light trader, where I bought my Rosco sheets.

Cut two sheets the size of your screen, tape them together on two edges and place the sheets on top of the screen. Static electricity will cause the sheets to stick to the screen and they don’t interfere with pen sensitivity at all at least with an active digitizer.

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It’s really that simple and a spectrometer test shows no nothing but red light coming from the laptop (the power LED gets a bit of tape over it).

you can either use this as-is or also customize you windows color scheme to make various elements more readable with a red, green or yellow overlay.

Note that this particular filter also works well for astronomy.

Published by

Michael Harrison

Husband, Programmer, Irish dancer, tinkerer, astronomer, layabout (as much as possible)

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