I've just taken my darkroom out of mothballs, and after 5 years of sitting with the power off, my ZoneVI VC head is acting strangely: the ready light goes on simultaneously with the power light, and stays lit throughout an entire printing session. To those of you unfamiliar with the ZVI head, that may sound fine, but it is abnormal. The ready light should be off while the head warms up, and typically goes off while the enlarger is not in use while you process a print. The standard trick was to turn the enlarger on in "focus" mode as soon as your print is in the fixer, so that it would re-stabilize in time for your next print. I can't think of any reason why something electronic would fail from lack of use, and am not sure what to do. Any suggestions? Do you know if Richard Ritter was involved with the enlargers and might be knowledgable? (P.S. After the long absence, it was fun to pyro/tray develop my first bunch of new negatives yesterday, and see them come out fine and scratch free! It was when I was proofing today that I noticed the enlarger was not functioning the way I remembered, although I was of course still able to make my proofs.)
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