As far as I can tell, Durst makes the finest enlarging head on the market. My question is, can the Durst Multigraph be mounted on a Zone VI enlarger? Or on any other enlarger? Any thoughts or recommendations would be much appreciated. Standish

-- Standish Lawder (sdl@sni.net), February 03, 1999

Answers

I've been using a Multigraph for several years now.

As I understand it, the Zone VI enlarger is a 5x7 unit. The Multigraph goes on 4x5 enlargers. Durst include printed material about adapters for various enlargers like Beseler and Omega.

In USA JOBO distribute Durst, so they would have the full official story.

--le

-- Lloyd Erlick (lloyd@the-wire.com), February 05, 1999.

Standish, As a L1200 enlarger with Multigraph head owner, I will agree with you that this is a very good enlarger. I must say in all fairness to anyone considering one of these enlargers, that they do not come cheap. Yes, they do have all the fine electronics and the sensor puck to read the image to set the exposure. This is all made possible by the contrast table data that is supplied by Durst through their paper testing. They do supply data tables for a small choice of papers, half of which can't be obtained in the U.S. The data supplied that can be used is for Kodak and Ilford. I have yet to see anything on Oriental Seagull,Agfa,Forte,Sterling, Cachet or Luminos. If I recall correctly, the RC papers have different data then the FB, even though they may be the same brand. I have tried repeatedly to get additional data from Durst or their distributor (JOBO)without any luck. It seems that Durst is waiting for the paper companies to supply them with the required amount of paper in order to carry out their tests! The enlarger can still be used with other paper brands even though the contrast data infor- mation entered is not for that specific paper. It's a trial and error process until ones gets to know the relationship between the settings and the paper. My complaint is that you pay a lot of money for computerized equipment which is only good on a very limited amount of papers and forces you back to the hit and miss technique for the majority of the rest. Product support is very lacking!

-- Rick Obermeyer (obermeyer_rick@si.com), February 18, 2000.