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Light Table
One of the first jobs I had out of college was only slightly related to what I studied. None the less, it was a job. I spent a lot of time splicing film, and going through customers slides, fixing photographs, and moving film to VHS. It wasn’t that hard, but I was not ready for 9 to 5 life. I had a lot of flexibility in college, and like most my age, I loved to sleep. When I suddenly didn’t get the amount of sleep I needed, I was always tired at work. This was something that was tolerable with a lot of coffee, until it came to working with the light table.
We worked in the basement of the building, and there was not a lot of natural light. Instead, we had the very common fluorescent bulbs hanging over our heads. However, when I had to use the light table to go through slides, the room around me was dark, and the only light I had came from the light table. This made it much easier to see the slides, and determine if there was any damage to that slide. What I didn’t know was that this was when my lack of sleep would catch up with me.
There was something about the dark room and the light coming from the light table that made me extremely tried, and I fell asleep countless times while sitting there. That was strange for me, as I never fall asleep anywhere, even when I’m tired. It was the light table. My boss came over and thought I was sick, and sent me home for the day. After that, I made sure I had a lamp for some extra light on the side while I was working so the same thing did not happen again.
Despite putting me to sleep, the light table was a great tool for studying things you can’t really see very well in normal or natural light. It allowed me to see the small scratches that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. Anyone who works with slides and negatives would benefit from this extra tool. It’s often a waste of time and money to make prints from things that have defects, and sometimes, you can see those defects until after printing, or if you have the use of a light table. Just make sure you have a lot of sleep and some caffeine on stand-by when it comes time to use one.
Summary
Light tables are a great tool to use for those who are involved with photography and developing film. Light sources can be a potential problem so be sure you have additional lighting to offset the glare. Slides can also be inspected with greater visibility using these great tables.
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