Beseler 4x5MXII adapter to Ilford 500H

[esearing]

Update - For anyone following along or who finds this in the future.

The beseler mixing box for the Ilford 500H is taller than the Omega and other brands. It protrudes through the head and down through the upper bellows on the enlarger. This puts the opaque panel almost in contact with the negative carrier. So I borrowed the opaque circle from my Dicro head that is dead and put it into the ring below my bracket. This gives me two levels of diffusion and gets rid of the side shadows. I am assuming this will also reduce the light by about 1 stop. To the naked eye the light looks evenly distributed. this seems to have resolved all three problems above.

So my set up is 500H secured to 1/4 inch plywood bracket, on top of ring from cold light head with a diffuser added to the bottom which protrude into the upper bellows platform.

This will have to suffice until a proper mixing box can be obtained. I doubt I could use this set up with smaller film formats.

[esearing]

Update -
Yesterday I sealed up all the light leaks and took some measurements on the base with no negative present. There is about 1/3rd stop fall off of light from center to lower right corner and less at the other corners. I can live with that.

So I set out to make my first print. I loaded the negative and measured my light and dark areas using the Analyzer Pro and saw that my log difference from the negative was only .71 so I knew I needed bump the contrast. Using the indicators I chose 3.5 which gave me an exposure time of 15 seconds. I pressed print button and the green light came on for less than 3 seconds and then nothing. The blue side bulb had com off of its connector while setting things up. So I got that working again and put in a new sheet and pressed print and it worked. The print was very close to what I would call a finished print but the whites were not quite as crisp as I would like. So I bumped the grade to 4 and kept same time. I also dodged the foreground white water a bit and this print came out a tad bright but I knew dry down would even it out some. (After drying the first print is a little too gray in the white water while the second is darn near perfect). The Analyzer is an amazing tool.

Second negative - a more dense negative with less shadow. This one gave me some trouble. It took a couple of different ways of measuring to get a time and grade that printed well. The d-log was .91 and I wasn't thinking correctly. I needed a lower grade to let the shadows fall where they should, and my whites were not truly white at the scene. I also did not really understand how to burn in with the analyzer controller yet so this print was not as successful as the first.

What it taught me is that negative density and contrast will affect what the analyzer displays along its gray scale. Using the Ilford head is different than using under lens filters in that the green light is very short and bright while the blue light is very dim and long. Scene contrast needs to be considered too before blindly following the analyzers suggested times. If there is no pure white or black, one must shift time and contrast grade until it matches closer to the scene contrast and tones. It would be a good practice to note items that are middle tones when metering scenes, especially if the scene is low contrast.

I think I will like this system better than using under lens filters as long as the bulbs come on when they are supposed to.