Dear All,

I try to buy a enlarger for my darkroom. There are some secondhand enlargers to choose. My job is 35mm, sometimes 6X6 mm format.

#1. Durst Laborator 1000, black & white enlarger, #2. OMEGA PRO LAB B66, monochrome condensor head with optional diffuser and Super Chromega C760 dichroic colour head. #3. Durst M605 colour enlarger, #4. LPLC6700 colour enlarger,

Any comments are welcome.

Thanks

Wanye

-- WANYE SONG (w.song@qut.edu.au), April 04, 2002

Answers

I would go with the Pro Lab myself. Parts are still available but it is a strong, well made enlarger. With the color head (on any one of the enlargers), you can use it as contrast filters by dialing in the appropriate filtration... a win/win situation.

-- Scott Walton (walton@ll.mit.edu), April 04, 2002.

Wanye: I picked up a used Omega C760XL last year that uses the same C760 head as the B66 that you mention. (With all the folks moving to digital darkrooms, now is a great time to find a used enlarger at a great price.) I love this enlarger - it's given me much better prints, more ability to finely control print contrast by dialing in precise contrast filtration, and has enabled me to tackle the occasional RA-4 colour print.

Something for your consideration - if I were purchasing another enlarger, one thing that I'd want is an enlarger that allows for accurate lens and negative carrier alignment. My previous Omega B600 drove me nuts as there were no adjustments to align the lens stage and the negative stage with the easel - without stopping the lens way down (which lost me resolution), I coudn't consistently get sharp corners/edges on my prints. In spite of the manufacturer's comments that adjustment wasn't needed because is was manufactured to be in alignment, this simply wasn't the case.

The C760 allows for lens stage tilt and negative carrier adjustment - the only drawback with all this adjustability is that obtaining a precise alignment isn't easy without an appropriate tool.

When I first started using the C760, I worked for several evenings using an alignment negative only to find that once I found a good alignment for one print size, its alignment would shift when I changed magnification. I was considering the purchase of a Peak 1 grain focuser to help see into the corners while aligning when my local photo supplier recommended that I try a simple enlarger alignment kit. This kit consists of a small box that sits precisely flat on the easel and contains a tiny laser that shines perpendicularly up from the easel to reflect off either a mirror held against the front flange of the enlarging lens, or (with the lens removed) the bottom of my glass negative carrier (or a mirror on top of a glassless carrier). All this for less than the price of a Peak 1. With a bit of lens and negative stage tweaking, once the source of the laser and its image as reflected back onto the surface of the box that contains the laser are coincident, I've got great alignment in seconds - and it shows.

After this experience, I'd hesitate to buy an enlarger that doesn't have the capability to be precisely aligned, and wouldn't again work without an alignment tool - time is to valuable to waste making prints that aren't sharp as the result of poor alignment.

-- David R. Williams (ddwill@telusplanet.net), April 05, 2002.