$20 LASER Enlarger Alignment Tool

[Drew Wiley]

Gosh, Pere, I once did a gig alternating my prints between the largest representation of AA's "mural" prints ever assembled. The reason AA taught people to make big prints lower contrast is because his own shots would look inappropriate otherwise. The big ones really are soft and fuzzy in most cases. His lenses, film, and darkroom gear was a far cry from modern equivalents. Your LPMM argument is meaningless in this case.

[Tin Can]

Drew start a LF Myth Busters show.

Soon nobody will care about LF.

🙈

[Drew Wiley]

"Clearing Winter Storm" was a 1930's image that survived his Yosemite darkroom fire, but was damaged with smoke stains and hell to print. He didn't have the skill to make a corrected printing duplicate. I've done it for clients with damaged negs; but it was tricky. "Monolith" was even earlier - actually a 6-1/2 X8-1/2 glass plate. And he was something of a beginner at that point. Both those classic images would be a lot easier to print using today's premium VC papers. But when he was alive, VC papers were so-so at best.

[Peter De Smidt]

Ha! Ever seen any of AA's 8X10 negs blown up to larger than 20X24? They're pretty darn fuzzy even by the standards of most of his own working era. The better mural-sized prints were actually made by a commercial lab better equipped, under his supervision esthetically, of course. Most EW prints would be hopeless if they were much bigger than contact size.<snip>

Perhaps that means that means that issues like who's system is better aligned miss the more important issues? Maybe a cheap, easy to make, good-enough system is not such a bad thing.

[Drew Wiley]

LF is more important than ever, Randy. How else are they going to come up with a "warped film holder look app" on a Smart phone, or a "mosquito flying around inside the bellows" app? ... I didn't forget about your Smith-Victor needs, but can't figure out how to get to it. It's in the back corner of a loft behind several hundred feet of picture frame moulding.

[Drew Wiley]

Peter - all the little glitches add up. I happen to like my own shots printed crisp. Other people are welcome to go around claiming it's only the "image" that counts, which is like stating it doesn't matter if Mozart gets played by a junior high marching band with nothing but tubas and kazoos. But I have nothing against low-cost solutions. I do it all the time. Just this afternoon I set up my moulding shaper where the equivalent of a $400 router lift was replaced with a $25 auto scissor jack, which actually works faster and more precisely. But the router itself is the best one can gets and dustless.

[Tin Can]

Old threads seem better.

Jim Jones has stayed true.

http://www.largeformatphotography.in...l=1#post334892

[Peter De Smidt]

Ansel Adams and Edward Weston were the equivalent to a junior high marching band....? No one is saying that the technicalities don’t matter. Turing it into a fetish, though, likely means time not spent becoming a better artist.

[Bob Salomon]

Drew, AA made the "Monolith, Face of Half Dome" with a crappy Adon glass, this is true...

But, do you thing that is the Clearing Winter Storm negative under 25 lp/mm peformance ? This was not an Adon, but a Cooke Triple fully assembled. If it is only 25 lp/mm at 8x10 then its IQ it would be hard to beat with a modern 4x5 setup because required true 50 lp/mm performance are not that easy to obtain outside a lab.

Some people were judging Adam's work from small prints seen with a magnifier.

Look, while a regular enlarger lens can assure 6 lp/mm (as required) in a x2 print from a 8x10" negative that lens is not working well at x2, for that you would require a duplication lens (Rodagon D or R), so the small print seen with a magnifier cannot speak about the true enlarging potential.

Inspect a big Clearing Storm with a magnifier and you'll see...

An Apo Rodagon D is a lousy enlarging lens. Maybe you meant the Apo Rodagon N or, even better for murals, the Rodagon G?

[Pere Casals]

An Apo Rodagon D is a lousy enlarging lens. Maybe you meant the Apo Rodagon N or, even better for murals, the Rodagon G?

No...

Bob, the Rodagon R excels at 2x, it is in its sweet range, while Rodagon N is optimized for 10x and recommended for 2x to 15x: yes, it also works for 2x, but this is because enlargement is low and we are ok with 10lp/mm on the print.

Then if we inspect with a magnifier a x2 print made by Ansel Adams (the Clearing Storm in the MoMA is 15 1/2 x 19 1/8", https://www.moma.org/collection/works/52135) perhaps we won't see a detail better than 6 lp/mm, the required one to see a perfect print, but this is not because the 810 negative has 12lp/mm enlarged x2 !!!

If a 810 negative has say 30 lp/mm and we enlarged it x2 with a regular enlarging lens we wont obtain 15lp/mm on the print, if we want that we need a reproduction/duplication lens that excels at x2.


Of course if enlarging x8 a MF negative with a Rodagon D it would be pitfall, while a N would be a nice choice, no doubt.


So what I say is that those that juged Ansels' negatives from 2x prints are wrong, because regular enlarging lenses (at 2x) won't show in the print what enlarging potential the negative has.