LED Enlarger Head?

[tgtaylor]

Beseler has discontinued the 45S head and replaced it with the 45SL which features a LED light source and an external stabilized light source:
https://www.beselerphoto.com/light-sources/

How significant are the benefits of having an LED light source over the bulb? I have had the 45S for years now and have never noticed a vibration on the easel. The B&H price tag is $4300 - almost twice the price of the 45S. Is it worth it?

Thomas

[Peter De Smidt]

For that amount of money, I'd make my own. The main advantages are less heat for a given lumen output, and long-lived bulbs, assuming good heat management.

[Larry Gebhardt]

I built my own variable contrast LED system. I think it's got a lot of benefits, but those are more related to the controller and the blue and green LEDs for VC printing than just replacing halogen bulbs with LEDs.

[John Layton]

If you are printing black and white only...you might find a VC LED head from Heiland which might actually cost significantly less than the new Beseler Unit. I've been using a Heiland unit for up to 5x7 and love it.

[Pere Casals]

Is it worth it?

It is a 3 lamp + Dichroic Interference Filters

In the past interference filters were moving their position to filter more or less of the light before the mixing box.

I cannot say what's inside the 45SL, perhaps it's an additive system that has "substractive controls" for the user interface, the 3 lamps suggest that, this would be 3 high CRI warm white LED sources each filtered with dichroic filters, and each lamp would have a separate dimmer.


My guess is that this color head should reproduce very well the spectral nature of a Tungsten dichroic head, so it should be very suitable for RA-4 printing as channel crosstalk would be the standard one. Besseler is a serious thing, if they say that price this is beacuse it's a fine product for master RA-4 color printers.

For BW things are way simpler, two Rosco filters allows to make perfect prints, as Steve Sherman points: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRlq8CwVvws , so for BW a DIY LED source it's the way. IMHO.

[William Whitaker]

I cannot say what's inside the 45SL...

Offhand, I'd say gold.

[Pere Casals]

Offhand, I'd say gold.

The electronics always contain a tinny amount of gold

...but the 45SL specs suggest that this is not a botched job and that they know about what they do.

[Tin Can]

Interesting!

Will look and see.

If you are printing black and white only...you might find a VC LED head from Heiland which might actually cost significantly less than the new Beseler Unit. I've been using a Heiland unit for up to 5x7 and love it.

[Tin Can]

These 3 interest me.

Not saying I am buying...


https://heilandelectronic.de/led_beseler_45mxt_8x10inch

https://heilandelectronic.de/5x7inch

https://heilandelectronic.de/led_leitz_v35

[Tin Can]

I was using a Artograph 920 not a 920 LX on a FOTAR 10X10 enlarger as a 5X7 enlarger lamp in a DIY head which held this lamp very close to a Saltzman 5X7 glass-less negative carrier.

It worked well for me.

But i was primarily enlarging onto 30X40" X-Ray film which is far faster than normal paper. I did make some 16X20" prints on Ilford MG but do not recall the exposure times.

I just posted a print made with the Artograph here.

However I took down that studio, and sold the FOTAR for real good money 2 years ago.

I kept my good bits. I have other 10X10 to improve...

These days there may be better LED solutions.

LED's are evolving quickly!