35mm color enlarger for 4x5 b&w contact printing?

[fulltang]

I'd like to play with some 4x5 contact printing, starting out with black and white, but I would like to do some color in the future. From my research it seems like there's no problem using a 35mm enlarger for 4x5 contact printing, but I'm not really sure what models I should be searching for exactly. Do you all have some suggestions for something affordable that will fit the bill? I plan on using it for contact printing only.

Thanks!

[blue4130]

I contact print using a light bulb. If you want affordable, that's the way to go.

[koraks]

Pretty much any color enlarger will do, really. Just get whatever is available. I've done it with a Durst 605 because it's what I have sitting on my bench. Works perfectly. Aligning the neg and the paper in the dark under a sheet of glass can be a bit tricky, but you'll figure it out. It's easier if the neg and the paper are the same size.

[Alan9940]

I use my Beseler 45M for contact printing with enlarging papers; I've had it for 40 years and it's sitting there. ;) I use a light bulb for contact printing on much slower papers like Lodima and Adox Lupex.

[Pere Casals]

I plan on using it for contact printing only.


Take the cheapest you find. For comfort, you may remove the red disc filter under the lens, then you place on th eempty support the constrast filter you want.


I've been contact printing a lot with something like this:

194856


This ir not IR commanded, but it is a radio remote, so you glue the remote on the table (with a velcro) and you set Yellow or Purple one after the other with different times for different contrast levels, a metronome is nice to count seconds. You dodge while the low contrast (yellow) or the high contrast (purple) exposure. Later to set Purple to burn the shadows and Yellow to burn the highlights, if necessary ...or you press Red and you have safe light. A joy !!


You may place (perhaps) the rgb bulb inside the enlarger or in the bare ceiling.

[koraks]

Note that the color led bulb may be OK for b&with, but it's highly unlikely to work well with color. I've been toying with rgb leds for color a lot lately and products like these just don't cut it. A proper led approach with the currently available materials requires engineering a light source from scratch. The easiest solution for color contact printing is just to pick up a working color enlarger with a dichroic head. With a little bit of luck, a 35mm unit will cost the same as the Chinese led bulb...

Also the red "safelight" of this rgb led bulb may or may not be (likely not) entirely safe for vc papers. You'll get away with slow warmtone papers, but the faster papers are likely to suffer from fogging or at least reduced contrast. The problem is in the red leds which have secondary emission lines in the green and yellow part of the spectrum.

One more addition: the off the shelf rgb led solutions are unlikely to give maximal contrast with vc papers as the blue leds are generally not giving the sufficiently small wavelength and are too close to green. You'll get grade 4 or 4.5 max.

[Pere Casals]

I've been toying with rgb leds for color a lot lately and products like these just don't cut it.

For color you may use a CRI 98 warm white LED to substitute the tungsten bulb in dichroic head with a perfect match, or you may provide cyan and yellow additional sources to adjust channel crosstalk from the RGB bulb.




Also the red "safelight" of this rgb led bulb may or may not be (likely not) entirely safe for vc papers.

Red from RGB bulbs is perfectly safe, at least the four I've tried are perfectly safe. Every safe light has to be tested to know the distance-time at what it becomes unsafe. Take your safest light and put the paper on it, it will get fogged for sure.




One more addition: the off the shelf rgb led solutions are unlikely to give maximal contrast with vc papers as the blue leds are generally not giving the sufficiently small wavelength and are too close to green. You'll get grade 4 or 4.5 max.

Blue from RGB bulbs deliver perfect grade contrast 5, no doubt. Even a dichroic color head delivers 5 grade, and its blue channel delivers way more "green close spectrum" than the blue share in a RGB bulb.


I calibrated paper with the RGB bulb, I could get all grades.

194881


And no fog at all, all that paper was illuminated with the red from the rgb bulb, white is absolutely perfect.

[Alan9940]

Another anomaly that I found when trying to use LED bulbs for contact printing is that they don't shut off like a standard incandescent bulb; that is, it "fades to black." Probably not enough light or time to affect the paper, but it bothered me so I went back to a standard flood.

[Pere Casals]

Another anomaly that I found when trying to use LED bulbs for contact printing is that they don't shut off like a standard incandescent bulb; that is, it "fades to black." Probably not enough light or time to affect the paper, but it bothered me so I went back to a standard flood.

Mine stops inmediately.

A tungnsten bulb has transitories because of heating-cooling in the filament, a LED has not that problem. If your LED bulb "fades to black" for visual comfort then try with another model.

[fulltang]

Thank you all for the guidance, while I'm on the lookout for a real enlarger in my area, I decided to pick up pretty much the exact same RGB bulb (6w):


Take the cheapest you find. For comfort, you may remove the red disc filter under the lens, then you place on th eempty support the constrast filter you want.


I've been contact printing a lot with something like this:

194856


This ir not IR commanded, but it is a radio remote, so you glue the remote on the table (with a velcro) and you set Yellow or Purple one after the other with different times for different contrast levels, a metronome is nice to count seconds. You dodge while the low contrast (yellow) or the high contrast (purple) exposure. Later to set Purple to burn the shadows and Yellow to burn the highlights, if necessary ...or you press Red and you have safe light. A joy !!


You may place (perhaps) the rgb bulb inside the enlarger or in the bare ceiling.


I was wondering what distance you have your bulb and what exposure times you would recommend as a starting point for standard ilford multigrade paper?


An unrelated question, can you only buy 4x5 paper in the 1000 sheet boxes from ilford? I found a video from Tim Klein (creator of the sp-445) in which he used the sp-445 to develop contact prints with 4x5 paper, which I think is a really neat way to make contact prints without a full darkroom.

[Pere Casals]

I was wondering what distance you have your bulb and what exposure times you would recommend as a starting point for standard ilford multigrade paper?

It is the counter, you dim the light until your exposure time is around 10s to 20s, or what you prefer.

It is preferable that the light comes a bit "collimated", I place the bulb around 2m far from paper, under the bulb I place a plate with a 1" hole, the rays should come as perpendicular to the sheet as possible.

I've a lux meter, I adjust power to make arrive (initially) some 5 Lux on the contact frame.

You can use your smartphone with a lux meter App, in the front face it has a sensor that measures light for the screen auto-bright feature, the lux meter app takes the reading from there. That far it's not an authentic luxmeter because it lacks a dome, so the reading is very directional, anyway that reading can be a very good reference. You can locate the sensor by casting a tiny shadow o the top of the smartfone face, and looking at the reading in the app.

Remember that grades 4, 4.5 and 5 do require x2 the time than grades 00 to 3.5

[Bob Salomon]

It is the counter, you dim the light until your exposure time is around 10s to 20s, or what you prefer.

It is preferable that the light comes a bit "collimated", I place the bulb around 2m far from paper, under the bulb I place a plate with a 1" hole, the rays should come as perpendicular to the sheet as possible.

I've a lux meter, I adjust power to make arrive (initially) some 5 Lux on the contact frame.

You can use your smartphone with a lux meter App, in the front face it has a sensor that measures light for the screen auto-bright feature, the lux meter app takes the reading from there. That far it's not an authentic luxmeter because it lacks a dome, so the reading is very directional, anyway that reading can be a very good reference. You can locate the sensor by casting a tiny shadow o the top of the smartfone face, and looking at the reading in the app.

Remember that grades 4, 4.5 and 5 do require x2 the time than grades 00 to 3.5

Do you know that most incident light meters came with both a dome and a flat plate?
The flat plate is for metering when shooting flat subjects and the dome for 3D subjects,

[Mick Fagan]

An unrelated question, can you only buy 4x5 paper in the 1000 sheet boxes from ilford? I found a video from Tim Klein (creator of the sp-445) in which he used the sp-445 to develop contact prints with 4x5 paper, which I think is a really neat way to make contact prints without a full darkroom.

I didn't know about that clip, viewed it and it makes sense.

That said, I would suggest you think of obtaining a mostly dark, darkroom and adding a simple safelight. Similar to this is probably perfect. For years I did darkroom work at night with curtains drawn and a simple single orange type safelight bulb.

https://www.thefilmbloke.com.au/products/1x-safe-light-led-globe-bulb-red-e27-for-photographic-darkroomoffd

Once you have that your possibilities are greatly enhanced. You can then safely (do a paper test first) cut with either scissors or with a roller guillotine, a cheaper small pack of larger paper into the exact correct size for your film holder(s). 8x10" paper will give you 4 sheets, 12x16" paper will give you 12 sheets and so on. Ilford paper can be bought in a 25 pack of 8x10" in this country, probably yours as well. I would also suggest you purchase resin Coated (RC) paper to start out.

Mick.

[fulltang]

I didn't know about that clip, viewed it and it makes sense.

That said, I would suggest you think of obtaining a mostly dark, darkroom and adding a simple safelight. Similar to this is probably perfect. For years I did darkroom work at night with curtains drawn and a simple single orange type safelight bulb.

https://www.thefilmbloke.com.au/products/1x-safe-light-led-globe-bulb-red-e27-for-photographic-darkroomoffd

Once you have that your possibilities are greatly enhanced. You can then safely (do a paper test first) cut with either scissors or with a roller guillotine, a cheaper small pack of larger paper into the exact correct size for your film holder(s). 8x10" paper will give you 4 sheets, 12x16" paper will give you 12 sheets and so on. Ilford paper can be bought in a 25 pack of 8x10" in this country, probably yours as well. I would also suggest you purchase resin Coated (RC) paper to start out.

Mick.

That's a great idea, I actually did black out my second bedroom, but I'm still waiting on my trays to get here, so the sp-445 seemed like a really clean and east way to get started. I'm definitely going to cut down some of my 8x10 paper!

[Pere Casals]

Do you know that most incident light meters came with both a dome and a flat plate?
The flat plate is for metering when shooting flat subjects and the dome for 3D subjects,

OK, but still there is a flat plate.

The sensors in the smartphones have no plate require a very strong correction when light is directional (several x), compared with the lux meter, no problem if the smartphone sensor is used as a relative reference, or if correction vs the lux meter is applied, for the correction I simply take the readings with the lux meter and with the smartphone.

If been using the smartphone sensor as an spot meter on the easel, to guess the denstity key small spots would reach with certain exposure by checking the paper calibration.

[fulltang]

It is the counter, you dim the light until your exposure time is around 10s to 20s, or what you prefer.

It is preferable that the light comes a bit "collimated", I place the bulb around 2m far from paper, under the bulb I place a plate with a 1" hole, the rays should come as perpendicular to the sheet as possible.

I've a lux meter, I adjust power to make arrive (initially) some 5 Lux on the contact frame.

You can use your smartphone with a lux meter App, in the front face it has a sensor that measures light for the screen auto-bright feature, the lux meter app takes the reading from there. That far it's not an authentic luxmeter because it lacks a dome, so the reading is very directional, anyway that reading can be a very good reference. You can locate the sensor by casting a tiny shadow o the top of the smartfone face, and looking at the reading in the app.

Remember that grades 4, 4.5 and 5 do require x2 the time than grades 00 to 3.5

Thanks very much. Since I've never actually created a paper print before, I'm not really sure what I'm doing in regards to burning and dodging. Would it be possible to get an acceptable exposure using only the white channel?

[Pere Casals]

Thanks very much. Since I've never actually created a paper print before, I'm not really sure what I'm doing in regards to burning and dodging. Would it be possible to get an acceptable exposure using only the white channel?


Yes... with warm white light (3500k) you get a normal contrast grade 2.5 I guess.

You may start with a warm white LED bulb of (say) CRI 96 and placing Ilford contrast filters under light to have a good reference about what each grade does. With no filter you have contrast 2.5 aprox, with the 2.5 filter under the bulb you have have the same grade to double the exposure time to get the same, as the filter has a light transmission of the half.

All ilford filters from 00 to 3.5 have the same exposure, the double than using no filter. Filters 4, 4.5 and 5 require x2 more exposure time than filters 00 to 3.5, and x4 more than if using no filtrer. This is to have the same light grey tones, as you increase grade shadows get darker.


Here you have some tutorials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woXZb8gjG4o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwDyB25-IeQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNx66le363g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sewXRaFdkBI


First you have to learn to make test strips.

If you have never printed perhaps it would be interesting that you start controlling contrast by using ilford contrast filters, later you may use the RGB bulb for convenience, when you are familiar with what each filter grade does then you may try to obtain the same with the RGB channels.


Feel free to ask anything, I'm still a learner but I'd be happy if I can help.

[fulltang]

Yes... with warm white light (3500k) you get a normal contrast grade 2.5 I guess.

You may start with a warm white LED bulb of (say) CRI 96 and placing Ilford contrast filters under light to have a good reference about what each grade does. With no filter you have contrast 2.5 aprox, with the 2.5 filter under the bulb you have have the same grade to double the exposure time to get the same, as the filter has a light transmission of the half.

All ilford filters from 00 to 3.5 have the same exposure, the double than using no filter. Filters 4, 4.5 and 5 require x2 more exposure time than filters 00 to 3.5, and x4 more than if using no filtrer. This is to have the same light grey tones, as you increase grade shadows get darker.


Here you have some tutorials:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woXZb8gjG4o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwDyB25-IeQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNx66le363g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sewXRaFdkBI


First you have to learn to make test strips.

If you have never printed perhaps it would be interesting that you start controlling contrast by using ilford contrast filters, later you may use the RGB bulb for convenience, when you are familiar with what each filter grade does then you may try to obtain the same with the RGB channels.


Feel free to ask anything, I'm still a learner but I'd be happy if I can help.

Fantastic information, once again. I'm curious, would the white channel on the party bulb work? It's not a problem if it won't, I can go get a different warmer bulb and use the party bulb as a safelight until I have a good understanding of the process.

[Pere Casals]

the white of the rgb bulb will work, but it may not deliver contrast grade 2.5, probably it will deliver a more contrasty grade