I’m getting my 11x14 camera back into shape, and will also be cobbling together enough of an 11x14 horizontal enlarger to test the viability of pressing my 305mm G-Claron into service as an enlarging lens for this format.
If all goes well on the testing front…my plan would then be to further refine the enlarger, and to seek out a light source - oversized to accommodate the spread of light through the wide angle (for this format) 305mm lens. So I’m figuring something in the vicinity of 14x16 or 16x16 should do the trick.
While I’d love to think that I could find an RGB LED flat-panel light which would be both bright enough and offer a good range of green to blue wavelengths (to allow for split-grade printing), my guess is that I might need to settle, at best, for a “white light” (about 5600K) lamp, and incorporate a slot for placing colored gels between this lamp and the negative stage. I’m also guessing I might need a bit of diffusion material to help smooth things out a bit.
At any rate…might the above quest for such a light source be a “pipe dream” respective of what I might require to make enlargements from such (11x14) negatives up to sizes in the vicinity of 40x60 inches?
Here is an example (16x18 RGB Flat Panel) of what I’m guessing (hoping!) might work:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ...led_light.html
Alternately, I do see that Glennview lists a 16x16 “high energy blue” florescent lamp, which I’d imaging might fit my needs given that I could filter this adequately. Even better might be to simply locate an Aristo 1414 florescent lamp (which apparently measures somewhat larger than 14x14 so my guess is that it would work), but I cannot currently find any of these available for sale.
Finally, while I truly love and depend upon my Heiland LED-VC lamp for 5x7 and smaller negatives, there is simply no way I could currently afford a version of this lamp large enough to accommodate 11x14 negatives.
At any rate…I’d truly appreciate any amount of information, enlightenment, “what are you thinking?” commentary, etc. - to help me on my quest. Thanks!
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