Last Friday, I had a real experience about the dark adaptation. I was doing a experiment called immunoblotting, which resembles the old fashion photo washing and fixation. I had to conduct this procedure in a dark room with a really, really dim light. First, I turned off the fluorescent light and turn on the dim light. I was blind then. I have to move the objects towards the dim light on the celling in order to figure out what it was. I blindly got the photosensitive film out and make it against my experiment object which had fluorescent can not be detected by human eyes. I had a timer and timed it for 5 minutes. During that time, I still could not see anything and  I had to move timer in order to see the number. Then after 5 minutes, I put the film in the machine to wash. When I turned around, I noticed something. Now I could see almost anything clearly. The estimated time was about 6 minutes. Then I remembered that pigment regeneration time for cones was about 6 minutes, maybe cones were responsible for the first 6 minutes in dark. Then I continued the experiment for 10 minutes. After that, everything was very clear. I think that after that, rod photopigments were regenerate about 20 minutes and kicked in help me fully adapted in dark.

That is my personal experience about dark adaptation.