dark room equipment

[Tim Kimbler]

Thanks for the help and information on my selection of first camera and lens. I have a couple more questions. Can I get good results developing in trays till I can purchase a JOBO? Can the JOBO or an equivelent be bought used? Is the 45 MXT a condenser? Most of my reading leads me to believe that most darkroom tec hs are using a color enlarger. Can you get good results with out the added expe nse? If so, I have seen D2's available for very good prices. Are these good too ls? They are not cold light heads. Is it best to have a cold light head in a c ondenser? Again thanks for your help in making these decisions.

Tim.................

[Darron Spohn]

All the famous landscape photographers earlier this centry got good results tray developing their negatives, so I don't see any reason you couldn't. It's just m uch easier in a Jobo or other rotary tube processor. And yes, Jobo are available used. Check out the classified ads at http://photo.net/photo/ and other places. I recently saw someone buy a Jobo CPA2 with a bunch of print and film drums for just $600. If I had been at that store 30 minutes earlier that would have been my processor.

Most black and white enlargers are condensors. You remove the condensor head and place the cold light in the empty space you just created. Takes about 30 second s. The D2 is a very good enlarger. If you find a good one at a good price, go fo r it. Don't accept a used enlarger in anything less than excellent condition. Yo u can add a cold light head any time for about $200 new or half that used.

And yes, for black and white work cold lights beat condensors every time. This h as been debated elsewhere on this forum, but no one has ever named a good black and white printer who uses a condensor head. You can also get excellent results with dichroic color heads, but at a much higher entry price and higher maintenan ce.

[Dan Smith]

You can do anything with the most basic of gear. Tupperware containers and shuf fling the film by hand in the dark. An older enlarger used with good technique and negs processed to match its characteristics will give good results. If you work with your gear and use carefully you are assured of good results. H aving said that, get the newest and best stuff you can. A lot of times it is no t the cutting edge stuff, but the standard quality gear we have all been buying for years. Take a good look at what the best people in the business use and tho se you particularly admire use. Most of them did not start with the finest gear money can buy and many never buy that in later years as their results with the familiar is better in most respects than they can get by suddenly switching to t he unfamiliar and recalibrating everything. If you do buy gear and are hankering to switch to something new, make sure you h ave a real reason to get it. Changing for the sake of change is normally counte rproductive. Changing for a specific reason, such as 'this particular thing' wil l be better, easier, faster, lighter, whatever, will help you keep from becoming a gadget freak & wasting all your money on stuff that doesn't improve your resu lts. A lot of shooters use tri-x still. "Old" technology film. But, it works. A lot use TMax or Delta-"new" technology film. For them, it works. So, guide your purchases with what you think will work & it is hard to go wrong. Once yo u know what does actually work for you from experience then you will know if try ing something else will really result in improvements. You will also find yours elf trying fewer things because it will be easier to determine that it isn't rea lly any improvement at all for your style of working. And your style & comfort is what it is all about. If it works, do it. And no matter what someone else u ses successfully, it might not work for you.

[Bill_92]

Uh, two exceptions to the "no great printers use condensers": Paul Caponigro use s a Durst condenser and Brett Weston used a variety of condensers--sometimes eve n a point source! (See article "The Quality of Light in the Dark" by Joe England er in PhotoTechniques a couple of years ago.) But I won't argue with the superio rity for most negs of diffused light (although I prefer tungsten diffused to flo urescent cold light for VC paper; John Sexton has written about this distinction somewhere). The ideal, I've found, is to have both kinds of enlarger heads avai labe for different negs; if you can only afford one, I agree that diffused, if n ot cold, is the best option.

[Tom Johnston]

You are confused about equipment. Knowing the enlarge model does not tell you what type of light source it has. You can put a dichroic, condenser, or cold light on almost any enlarger chassis. You can't use a cold light with a condenser. You use one or the other. Yes, you can get exellent results with and type of light source. But, if you are printing black and white, I would recommend either a cold light or a dichroic head. If you aren't planning on printing color, there is certainly no necessity of buying a color head. One thing to consider though, is what type of papers you will be using. VC or graded. It's best that your light source is optimized for the paper you will be using most often. For example, if you are using an Aristo cold light with VC papers, you should get the V54 tube.