Downsizing / Rearranging Darkroom

[pplatz87]

As the business manager I want to re-arrange our darkroom and sell some of the equipment. So I guess my question for you is this: We have four B&W enlargers, and two of them support very big negatives, up to 4x5, and we also have longer lenses to match for the large format. I thought that it might be a good idea to sell the longer lenses, because I really don't see anyone using those. I think that if this was my own darkroom I wouldn't sell the large lenses because I would want to try a huge format camera. But, since I have to think about the educational purposes of our darkroom and the general use of it, I suppose that people won't have anything bigger than 120mm. So If I go on this assumption, I would keep the enlargers for big negatives but sell the larger enlarger lenses. The general question is what you would do if you were in my position?

The second part of the question has to do with the lenses themselves. Schneider glass is the best glass in the world and we have for two Schneider lenses for the ZoneVI. We have a COMPONON-S 5.6/80 & 5.6/135. This glass would fetch a higher price, but I would hate to have to part with it. The rest of the lenses are just EL-Nikon.

Enlargers: Besler 2x3, Besler 2x3, Besler 4x5, Zone VI, Leica v35
Lenses: EL-Nikon 40mm, EL-Nikon 50mm (3x) - (one looks older and different), EL-Nikon 75mm, EL-Nikon 105mm, EL-Nikon 135mm, COMPONON-S 5.6/80 & 5.6/135

This Lens was just lying around, not sure what this is for, I think it was use with a Dual Dichro: Kodack Ektanon 161mm f4.5

[John Kasaian]

How many students use the dark room?

[David A. Goldfarb]

Darkroom equipment doesn't fetch a lot of money these days unless it's pretty unusual, and if your darkrooms are for educational purposes, large format seems to be a growing field in that area, so I'd keep your 135mm lenses and the 161mm Ektanon, which are the only ones that cover 4x5" of those you've listed. I'd be surprised if you could get more than $100-150 for a 135mm Componon-S or EL-Nikkor in any case. Better to hang onto at least one of them and encourage the students to try 4x5". The 75mm, 80mm, and 105mm lenses are for medium format, and should cover 6x6, 6x7, and 6x9 respectively.

[pplatz87]

I found something else. What is a Durst Unicon A50? I think I'm going to sell it. The Durst Lensboard Lapla 39s are already on ebay.