Like many others,the digital age took hold of me and I shut down my darkroom on '04.
Now that I retired I miss the fun of large format and the challenge of the "perfect exposure" and hours in the darkroom developing the film and printing the image.
I fell into LF photography in the late 70's for no other reason than I wanted to print large photographs and murals. 35MM and 2 1/4" just didn't cut it.
The Navy gave me a camera if I would use it for official functions,which I did. Film was free as the format was slowly going away.
Like most photographers the bug got me and I went nuts for many decades. I tried every chem,film and paper you could get your hands on.
Even went so far as to make my own developer and sensitizing papers. You know the grip a darkroom can get on your soul.
Anyway, I dug out the old 4x5 enlarger and after ten hours of putting it all back together as well as a good cleaning, it is ready to go again.
It is a nice diffusion enlarger. Even with twin lamps it is not the brightest light source out there,but it will not warp a negative due to excessive heat.
Twin cooling fans remove all heat. There are no vibrations transmitted to the film plane.
I have whoop-Te-do electronic exposure timers to plug in if I need them. I have most of the negative holders and lens holders made for it. The auto focus cams and lens holders work well. There is a aux bellows attachment as well for non standard lenses.
I'm looking forward to printing images again.
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