Durst 5x7 Negative Carriers

[Graybeard]

I'm considering purchase of a Durst 138 that is offered without any negative carriers.

Could some of this group's Durst users describe the Durst 5x7 carrier(s)? Are these glassless like the common 4x5 carrier for an Omega enlarger or does Durst sandwich the negative between glass plates?

I do my own machine work and can probably fabricate a carrier once I have some idea of what the carrier looks like.

Thanks in advance.

[Len Middleton]

The standard Durst carriers are glass type, not glassless.

[ic-racer]

It takes a TRINEG. It comes with 2 glasses but they can be removed and a TRINOMASK can be used for glassless enlarging. There are pictues of the TRINEG in the manual. There are other carriers made in addition to the TRINEG, I believe.

There are 3 Durst 5x7 carriers on ebay now. At least one TRINEG. (maybe one is from your enlarger , I always wonder who would seperate a universal negative carrier from the only type of enlarger that it fits.)

[Allen in Montreal]

........
I do my own machine work and can probably fabricate a carrier once I have some idea of what the carrier looks like.

Thanks in advance.

There are several carriers that fit the 138.
In addition to the carrier mentioned by IC, which as I understand it, is an optional carrier for the 138sp ($$$), the standard Durst 138 neg carrier is the Nega138.
It is, like all things Durst, a very well made item. It is meant to have glass, which can be removed and a Lapfe mask installed in 35mm 6x4.5, 6x6 and all combos leading up to an including 5x7. But you either have a Lapfe or glass in place, you can't run without one or the other.

If you take your time, they can had rather inexpensively on the evil. I now have 5 for my 138, including one that was brand new and did not have to break the bank for them.

There is also the Larka, which was part of the copy neg system, but I converted one in to a negative carrier that works well (but is much slower to use than a Nega138, but locks down much better than an Nega, much like a Grane does).

There is the Grane/Grahal combo, I recently tried to buy one of these on the evil, they don't come up too often and I was a little shocked at the selling price, I dropped out of that auction.

The 138 is a wonderful enlarger to use, I have IC-Racer to thank for helping me land the one I have. I came close to purchasing a Zone 6 VC head for mine, someone else snagged it before I could complete the deal, but the condensor head is so nice, that I am not really that upset about loosing the deal either. They are not like the Beseler or Omega condensor heads I used in the newspaper darkroom at all.

Please forgive the cell phone pictures, I lock up the digi cams when not in use, so I just grabbed the iphone.

[frotog]

If you have a plain old 138 (single spring) with either the condenser head or the cls 501 color head, you'll need an adapter plate to use the trineg carrier, otherwise use the nega or the nega 138 carrier. If your 138 comes equipped with the double spring column, it came stock with the trineg. They are both excellent carriers and both can be used with glassless inserts.

[Allen in Montreal]

Hello Frotog,

The Durst brochure shows a Trineg in a single spring 138s (or sp but the mention the S) with a condensor head as well as a double spring version bearing the much larger CLS head.

If you have any of these setups could you post some pictures for us please, it would be a great help as we search for spare parts etc. If you have any pictures of the adapter you mentioned that would be great too.

It is hard to know all the ins and outs of the various units Durst made and I am building a large file on the three Durst units I have to cross reference, the 1200, the 138s and the 184.

Any pictures would be greatly appreciated.

If you have a plain old 138 (single spring) with either the condenser head or the cls 501 color head, you'll need an adapter plate to use the trineg carrier, otherwise use the nega or the nega 138 carrier. If your 138 comes equipped with the double spring column, it came stock with the trineg. They are both excellent carriers and both can be used with glassless inserts.

[Drew Wiley]

Clean condition 5X7 carriers are hard to come by and can be very pricey, but I just snatched another one up for less than thirty bucks! Jensen Optical is making after-market carriers and he's an excellent machinist, but has less than an ideal reputation
for customer service (to put it mildly). The original glass is getting harder to find, but
Focal Point can supply it reasonably. Try to find a book-type carrier. The older one-piece ones are a lot less desirable.

[Drew Wiley]

Should have added - no need for all the various reducing masks. Just take the standard carrier like in Allen's picture and cut thin masks using a trimmer and knife -
I made mine out of voided Cibachrome mylar stock. It's senseless to have a precison
system like Durst and not have glass carriers to keep things truly flat. Carlwen at one time made fluid mounting carriers too, if you need the ultimate in dust and Newton-ring suppression.

[John Powers]

Or if you have an additional larger camera or back, Michael Mutmansky converted the 138S I bought to cold light 8x10. The cold light is a 12x12 Aristo. The negative carrier is 10x10 wooden frame with glass. It is a remarkably flexible enlarger.

John Powers

[frotog]

Hi, Allen,

Thanks for your correction. I had forgotten that Durst redesigned their condenser head around the time of the introduction of the cls 1000 head. Other than this photo from the Durst catalogue, I've never seen the last model of the condenser head before. I imagine they're very rare.

I have two cls 1000 heads on the beefed up, double spring 138 column and one old style condenser head on a single spring column. The trineg carrier not only has a different indexing system than the nega and the nega 138, it's also a 1/2" thicker. It will not work with the older model stock condenser head. A custom modification would require using a spacer under the condenser and rigging the indexing plate from the late model 138 to the old model.

The adaptor plate I referred to was designed to use the older model condenser head on the new style camera with the trineg carrier. See the adapter plate XB 31405 for condenser head (pg. 19) in the Laborator 138s and color Laborator operating manual (kind of difficult to photograph these bits without taking the heads of the camera). Basically it's just a square metal spacer about 3/16" thick that the old condenser head sits on allowing the operator to use the thicker trineg carrier.

You're lucky you resisted the temptation to purchase the "cold light" head. No cold light is going to be anywhere near as even as a durst condenser. If you prefer diffuse light this can be accomplished by laying a piece of Lee 216 full white diffusion (or the rosco equivalent) directly onto the top plate of glass in your carrier.