PhotoPeteUK
12-Mar-2007, 13:25
Anyone one here old enough to remember the Beseler CB7 5x4-35mm enlarger ? Made by Charles Beseler in the USA, it was available in the UK in the '60's/'70's and was a wonderful machine.
It had fully motorized up/down movements, focus and fine focus drives, it had an inclined column framework so the enlarger lens was always centred over the middle of the baseboard - no matter how big an enlargement you made. No cutting the image off on the bottom of a vertical coumn !
The negative carriers were amazing too - they had a Negaflat carrier for 5x4 cut film which tensioned the neg. in the carrier so as not to have any centre drop or pop during print. They also had an ingenious 'negatrans carriers' which took in a length of 35mm film and 'drove' it through the carrier by an edge traction system which made changing from frame to frame very fast. Their standard sandwich carriers were circular so you could rotate them to all angles between view and portrait formats.
Well guess what, after a lifetime in photo equipment (now retired over three years ago) I have one of these wonderful beasts for disposal to anyone who is a lover of large format darkroom work (there must still be a few out there ?). It is the Black and White model with 'zoom' condensor head (three element condensor set which changes position in relation to the neg. size - so no changing the glass lens sets at all).
It will need some TLC to bring it back into full use, a little dusting here and a little lubrication there, but I am sure that it will still serve somebody well !
If you are interested send me an e-mail on PJStanhope@aol.com (UK only please as you will have to collect from York). Let's talk about it !
(Charles Beseler are still in the enlarger business in the USA and still offer some parts to support this model)
It had fully motorized up/down movements, focus and fine focus drives, it had an inclined column framework so the enlarger lens was always centred over the middle of the baseboard - no matter how big an enlargement you made. No cutting the image off on the bottom of a vertical coumn !
The negative carriers were amazing too - they had a Negaflat carrier for 5x4 cut film which tensioned the neg. in the carrier so as not to have any centre drop or pop during print. They also had an ingenious 'negatrans carriers' which took in a length of 35mm film and 'drove' it through the carrier by an edge traction system which made changing from frame to frame very fast. Their standard sandwich carriers were circular so you could rotate them to all angles between view and portrait formats.
Well guess what, after a lifetime in photo equipment (now retired over three years ago) I have one of these wonderful beasts for disposal to anyone who is a lover of large format darkroom work (there must still be a few out there ?). It is the Black and White model with 'zoom' condensor head (three element condensor set which changes position in relation to the neg. size - so no changing the glass lens sets at all).
It will need some TLC to bring it back into full use, a little dusting here and a little lubrication there, but I am sure that it will still serve somebody well !
If you are interested send me an e-mail on PJStanhope@aol.com (UK only please as you will have to collect from York). Let's talk about it !
(Charles Beseler are still in the enlarger business in the USA and still offer some parts to support this model)