IIRC, dim pink fluorescent tube is due to mercury starving, so only the buffer gas is lit up. On some tubes you may get a purple color too! Yea you can call them weird tubes

that we call dim pink fluoros "weirded out" because no one knows why they do that.

Yes, as long as the lamp is a 4W, 6W, or 8W tube, an FS-5 or equivalent starter should work just fine at any of those supply voltages. I believe the important part is the lamp's voltage, not the main supply voltage, so there shouldn't be a difference.

Hi, I would like to know if the starter needed for a single lamp ballast for a F4, F6, F8 lamp is the same or different for each of the following ballasts: 120V ( Robertson L48) , 240V ( Robertson L4835 ) , and 277V ( Robertson L6827 ).

Before they knew the dangers of radium did they use it on darkroom equipment(scales, dials and meters, switches etc)? And how useful would it have been, when the safelight was not used?

Is f it is an exposed rated lamp, then I would say yes this is probably safe.

But assuming it is an enclosed rated lamp (as most are), then I would say maybe. If the lamp is used (or you don't know it's history), I would not at all run it in the open. Technically even a brand new lamp can explode with a severe enough manufacturing defect, but I haven't seen that.

Explosion is always a risk, but if you shield the lamp or shield yourself you should be relatively safe even with an old lamp.

Running them vertically reduces the likelihood.

I recently purchased some 400watt MH gear and would like to know if it’s safe to run the lamp out of an enclosure. I do know that MH lamps have the tendency to sometimes explode apon EOL.

There's a light in English class that looks close to EOL and it's really mercury starved and the other lamp on its ballast is a little dim too even though it looks new.  In fact that entire room is basically just one big EOL lol though it's actually more EOL ballasts than lamps

https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?album=9185&pos=0&pid=267212

Yes, use the wet sponge on cold tip is generally ineffective, but some people still do it, as a "last try to clean the tip before it cools down completely". And on top of that using rather large forces to scrub it off. Not realizing they are just damaging the things (both the sponge by tearing it apart by the force and hardened solder spikes on the tip, as well as the tip corrosion afterwards).

And for the shocks: It is not immediate destruction, just the surfaces wearing out over time by fatigue cracking within the coatings. 300..350 is still somewhat within the limits, for lead free you sometimes need to go up to 400degC (if you need small tip to melt the solder very quickly) and there the shocks become really way greater. Yes, it is not good practice to use that high temperatures for long time either, but that is another topic, sometimes you just need it.
But it is matter of how long the tip will last, not that much whether it survives short term or not, of course it does.