Well I just finished three printing sessions in my darkroom this week and I began to think about my old but trusted Zone VI Temperature Compensating Timer, and why hands down it is the most brilliant darkroom tool ever created. I have extolled this to everyone I speak to when discussing building or equipping a darkroom, and now it’s time to tell the world!

I have had mine since it came out in the mid 1980s and roughly 30 years later it never ceases to amaze, because sometimes inventions that solve a single but critical problem simply are the most valuable of all … at least to me.

Here’s the problem. You went into your darkroom last December and spent several hours to produce a beautiful print from a hard earned negative. Of course, you recorded all the information necessary (the recipe) to make another one just like it. Now it’s August and you decide to make several more.

You pull out the recipe, expose your paper for the same amount of time as before and use the same aperture on your enlarging lens. Next you slide your sheet of paper into the same developer you used before, mixed at same 68 degrees and start the timer. So far, so good. Except it’s not!

You smugly go through all the remainder of the darkroom chemical process steps, and make sure you have compensated for your particular paper’s dry-down characteristics, etc. Finally you leave your prints to dry (I place mine on window screens). Next morning you go back into the darkroom to collect your now dry prints, turn on the lights and … they don’t look exactly right!

@#$%#@$%^

What happened? You followed every step from the August session to the letter. You mixed the chemicals at 68 degrees, just like last time. Good for you, but you made a fatal mistake. You failed to take into account that the temperature of your solutions can drift dramatically during the course of a printing session. So it’s summertime now and you have started at 68 degrees. Well guess what … the temperature of the water is going to increase! Maybe a lot, perhaps into the 80s! Oops … higher contrast. Now turn that around and say you want to make a print in the wintertime that you originally made in the summer … now we are talking about your solutions perhaps dropping into the 50s, yielding a weak low contrast result.

Same thing when developing negatives where temperature control is even more critical! Negatives developed in the summer could end up being much too contrasty and the opposite for those developed during the winter.

Of course there are workarounds. Placing your film developing tank or print developer tray in a larger one containing ice water, etc. But in the end all solution temperatures drift. Life is too short; there’s an elegant solution that solves the problem once and for all.

The Zone VI Temperature Compensating Timer has three setting on it: Real Time; Paper; and Film. Connected to the timer is a temperature probe that’s placed in the developer tray for paper. For 35mm and roll film a water bath tray is used. The probe is placed in it, as are your film tank containing developer, and graduates containing stop, fixer and hypo clear.

The timer automatically compensates for any deviation from the standard 68-degree time so that every negative is developed properly and every print developed looks the same, no matter what the temperature of the developer and other solutions may be! That’s all it does and it does that perfectly – every time!! Simple and effective. Brilliant!!!!

Also connected to the timer is a footswitch that activates it. A digital display shows the amount of seconds that have elapsed and a beep softly goes off every 30 seconds so you don’t nod off!

Sadly the Zone VI timer is no longer made. I forgot what it cost when first introduced, but about ten years ago it sold for almost $400 before it stopped being produced (after the disastrous acquisition of Zone VI by Calumet).

Not to worry. If you are patient they are available from time to time on the used market for about half that price or thereabouts.

Look for them used on APUG, eBay or Craigslist, etc. and get one!!!!!!

You won’t regret buying one. I promise!