Salthill

[Ellis Vener]

anybody here use Salthill equipment? Was it worth it?

[John Cook]

I have their 4x5 sheet film washer. Best unit I have ever seen. Has a built-in venturi valve to aerate the water and create bubbles and turbulence which scrubs away the foam. Exactly what archival print washers need badly.

Would like to purchase more of their stuff (as the budget allows - big bucks) but assumed they had gone out of business. I saw their enlargers at the Javitts center ten years ago. Nifty!

[Frank Filippone]

They are out of business. I bought, from Joe Salthill himself, one of the washers. He was moving from NYC, and cleaned out a "closet" where he found several items.

[Keith Pitman]

I have a 16x20 Salthill easel. I bought used and probably overpaid for it, but it is very nice and precise.

[Brian Ellis]

I use the Salt Hill film washer. I don't know about "worth it," there were other washers that sold for a lot less money at the time but the Salt Hill can be used with both roll and sheet film, which is nice, plus I've had it for about nine years and it's still working just fine so I'm not complaining about the cost. I also had the Salt Hill film dryer at one time. It was supposed to work with both sheet and roll film. It worked fine with sheet film and medium format but for some reason always left drying spots on 35mm film so I eventually returned it and got my money back. Too bad, it was the smallest film drying system I've ever seen.

Salt Hill made quality products. Too bad they came on the market with their innovative enlarger just as digital was getting big. I understand the enlarger is what did them in.

[David E. Rose]

I have the Salt Hill enlarger alignment tool- it works great. I had previously used the commonly recommended bubble level and plate glass method. The first time I used the Salt Hill tool I was amazed at how far off I had been and what a difference it made! My impression is that everything they made was first rate.

[Jan Nieuwenhuysen]

Monochrom in Germany advertise a Monochrom/Salthill cross current baryta archival washer. The site is in German, so is the pdf describing it. For those of you who might be interested here is the link: http://www.monochrom.com/MonoC/int/pdf/Archivwascher.pdf. If this doesn't work got to www.monochrom.com, click impressum, click anleitungen. This is not an advertisement or something like that. I stumbled across it recently looking for a washer myself. I have never seen Salthill equipment, so I have no idea if this is usefull. Oh yes, they also sell a vacuum pump to use with it.

[Jeff Stierman]

I have a 16 x20 5-bladed Salthill easel and love it. I also picked up one of their variable intensity safelights. It's absolutely top notch equipment. In fact, I'd have to consider buying any of their equipment which I see being offered. Too bad I seldom see any !
Jeff

[Todd Hochberg]

I have a Salthill large print dryer for sale. It has never been used-still in it's original packing and shipping carton. It is the forced air type with fine wood and plexi case- beautiful design as in all their equipment. Any interest please write.
Todd

[D. Bryant]

I have a Salthill large print dryer for sale. It has never been used-still in it's original packing and shipping carton. It is the forced air type with fine wood and plexi case- beautiful design as in all their equipment. Any interest please write.
Todd
I have the Salthill enlarger alignment tool as well. It's always worked great for me.

Don Bryant

[paulr]

There stuff looked beautifully designed. I always wanted to check out that insane enlarger, but never met anyone who had one.

As far as bubbles in the wash water, there's been some pretty extensive research showing it's of no benefit and might actually slightly impede washing, so i wouldn't pay extra money for that feature.

[chilihead]

More than worth it - thats why you rarely see any for sale second hand !!!

[Ted Harris]

I have one of Joe's safelights and exchange emails with him every few months.

[Mapplethorpe]

I am a former student of Joseph Saltzer and I would be interested in his contacting me. If anyone knows his whereabouts please let him know that Edward Mapplethorpe is trying to track him down. I studied his calibration methods for the Zone System and will begin a large project where his input would be unequalled.

[Ted Harris]

Send me an email using a real name an a bit of detail and I'll be happy to send you his email.

[Michael Graves]

I have the Salthill enlarger alignment tool as well. It's always worked great for me.

Don Bryant

I have one too. I'm too stupid to figure out how to use it. I can build a multi-server cluster for a hospital, but I can't align my #$%#$#$$ enlarger. Must be a guy thing.

[snuck]

I'll join the ranks of the salty alignment people. Took me a little while to figure out, but I've been enlarging sharp photos ever since so....

[Michael Halsband]

Send me an email using a real name an a bit of detail and I'll be happy to send you his email.

Hi Ted,

If you are still in touch with Joe Saltzer I would like to contact him, He seems to have vanished with no trace, in addition to catching up to say hello and see how he is I am trying to source the blotter material that was used in the salthill forced air dryer.

Any information would be very much appreciated.

Thank you,
Michael




Michael Halsband
mh@michaelhalsband.com
C. 917 969-1116

[Mark Sampson]

Joseph Saltzer passed away in 2008. see:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2015/08/in-memoriam-joe-saltzer.html

[Sal Santamaura]

Hi Ted...


Joseph Saltzer passed away in 2008...As did Ted Harris.

[fishbulb]

Sad thread. I know several people locally who have Salt Hill darkroom products - negative and print washers, etc. - that they cherish.

[Bob Salomon]

Somewhere in the boxes from our move 4 years ago I have one or two of Joe’s exquisitely rare neckties. Wish I could find them again!

[Drew Wiley]

The enlarger alignment device was basically just a simplified kit of mirrors which bounced the light between the respective neg and easel planes to extend the focal length of a dot going through a mirror hole, which showed successful alignment within a bulls-eye pattern. That kind of thing can be assembled to a far higher degree of precision if necessary using standard components from Edmund Scientific. There was nothing novel about it; just study up on optical collimators. But it was affordable, and way more accurate than something like a Zig-Align or ordinary levels. I once combined it with a high-end industrial laser beam to achieve a level of plane control ridiculously too precise to make any practical difference. I did this more to check out the characteristics of the laser itself, which I had borrowed, as well as a "what-if" fun experiment. I still have the Salthill device.

[Bob Salomon]

The enlarger alignment device was basically just a simplified kit of mirrors which bounced the light between the respective neg and easel planes to extend the focal length of a dot going through a mirror hole, which showed successful alignment within a bulls-eye pattern. That kind of thing can be assembled to a far higher degree of precision if necessary using standard components from Edmund Scientific. There was nothing novel about it; just study up on optical collimators. But it was affordable, and way more accurate than something like a Zig-Align or ordinary levels. I once combined it with a high-end industrial laser beam to achieve a level of plane control ridiculously too precise to make any practical difference. I did this more to check out the characteristics of the laser itself, which I had borrowed, as well as a "what-if" fun experiment. I still have the Salthill device.

This is trying to see how many elephants you can balance on the head of a pin.
According to Bill Ziegler his mirror Zig Align was accurate to 1/5000”. According to LInhof they didn’t manufacture to that tight a tolerance.
According to Bill he made his system to align his LInhof B cameras.

[Drew Wiley]

The irony is that no commercial enlarger in existence was ever machined to tolerances worthy of fairly simple means of extreme calibration. But if you're designing a research telescope, your tolerances have to be way way tighter. Otherwise, I suspect there was a sizable dose of BS coefficient in Ziegler's claims. I still have a sample of the most accurate basic machinist-level/laser-pointer made during that era, and Zig-Align is a mere toy by comparison. But I ordinary just use a high quality machined level in conjunction with my tilting-mirror Peak Critical Magnifier to check if anything has gotten out of adjustment due to the latest earthquake or whatever. No typical paper easel is really all that flat either, especially if it's not vacuum design. But hunting a housefly with a 12ga shotgun can be fun, so I've calibrated machines various ways which amounted to overkill.
And I actually have a pin-registered vac easel cannibalized from a very expensive 70's-vintage process camera, which has a diecast rim and machined surface; but it weighs around 400 lbs. But even with that, speaking in nitpicky thousandths would be nonsense.
If someone want to go out, spend a ton of money for a ton of trued pink granite machinists surface to turn into an enlarging projection platform, then I can tell stories about instruments so sensitive even way back in the 70's, that if you even breathed on that slab of granite, the instrument would instantly measure the dimensional change of the slab due to the heat of your breath in millionths of an inch. Now they have machines that will draw a contour map of it in millionths, and yes, costing millions of dollars. We had a lot of fun back then, especially since one of my co-workers was the fellow that machined the optics for the Pioneer satellite projects and really knew his stuff.

[Eric Woodbury]

I have a dual mirror alignment tool for setup of a copy stand. Very nicely built. Elegant. I've never seen another like it. Hasselblad.

[Bob Salomon]

I have a dual mirror alignment tool for setup of a copy stand. Very nicely built. Elegant. I've never seen another like it. Hasselblad.

LInhof had the same one less the bayonet lens mount.

[Drew Wiley]

I looked at their slot washers, those of Zone VI, etc, don't remember if Gravity Works was in business yet, but came up with my own variation instead, which is more efficient in several respects, but holds about half as many sheets at a time. That is just one reasons it washes better. I don't like a lot of prints cramped in at the same time, and never print large quantities in any single session anyway. Besides, for about $80 worth of Plexiglas scraps back then, and an afternoon in the shop for each washer, I ended up saving an average of around $500 per washer. Just for personal use. I had no interest in trying to patent one more tweak.