I'll be living in a small apartment. I had been using a nice Saunders VCCE 6x7 enlarger. Now I'm just shooting B&W and not enlarging past 8x10. So I was wondering if there is a good, small, 35mm only enlarger where I still get the variable contrast control I got with the Saunders? I really dont want to play around with swapping out filters and recalculating exposure times!
thanks

-- Russell Brooks (russellbrooks@worldnet.att.net), March 26, 2000

Answers

The best possible enlarger for 35mm is the Leica V35 with VC head (pre-owned only, about $700 on eBay). Any enlarger with a color head can be used to print VC, with a combination of two of the color filters.

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), March 26, 2000.

I can't see that you'll really gain much space by getting a 35mm only enlarger. If you're going to be making the same size of prints, then the baseboard area and column height are going to be the same, regardless of how small the lamphouse is. In fact my rather old-fashioned 35mm condenser job is bigger than my LPL medium format dichroic head. A tiny enlarger will only restrict your print size and a flimsier column will be more prone to vibration.

-- Pete Andrews (p.l.andrews@bham.ac.uk), March 27, 2000.

I ended up getting the Leica V35. After using the Saunders for everything I have to say that I like this V35 even better...

-- Russell Brooks (russell@ebrooks.org), February 14, 2001.

Congratulations. The more you use it, the better you'll like it. If you have any questions about it, believe it or not a phone call to Leica (New Jersey) will be answered with lots of help. Mitch

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), February 14, 2001.