Saunders LPL 4500 II negative holders

[J_Tardiff]

Hi guys,

Well, I finally decided that I wasn't going to fix the gears on my 50-yr-old D2V and picked up a used LPL 4500II Dichroic enlarger for a good price. It's pristine, barely used and should last me a good long time, so I am quite pleased.

The one thing it didn't have was a couple of the negative holders that I will need and I am a little confused by something. New ones, of course are very expensive.

Question 1:

I know that I have heard that Omega D5 holders will work in this enlarger. They are, of course, pretty easy to find on the used market and 1/3 the price. Is this true and if so, are there any downsides? I am certainly not going to resort to jerry-rigging when the entire point of upgrading my enlarger was to migrate to a more stable platform. And when factored over the life of the enlarger the added $$ for the Saunders negative holders is not that big a deal, but if the D5 holders work fine, that is the way I would like to go for my medium format stuff.

Question 2:

(I hope I do not initiate a massive flame war here...) . I have been scanning my 4x5s and would really like to analog print some of them. I had never bothered to invest in a 4x5 holder for the D2v, in part because of the glass vs glassless debate. I am more than willing to invest in the Saunders glass 4x5 holder (one of the reasons I would like to get the less expensive MF holders). For those of you who have used both -- it seems to me that folks really do seem to prefer the glass holders, even with the additional surfaces to care for.

Appreciate the input, as always.

JT

[Stephen Lumry]

The D5 holders will fit on a LPL 4X5 enlarger; however, it is a tight fit and I would not recommend inserting and removing the holder a lot. You kind of have to force it because they are bit deeper than a normal LPL holder and have positioning ridges. The LPL keeps the holder snug and it does not move around, the D5 always seems to be a bit loose. New ones can be bought at KHB, a Canadian company, on eBay for $94 USD. They may have used holder for sale, I would call them. The price was a lot better when the Canadian dollar was a lot cheaper. KHB is also a good source for other LPL parts.

[RDB Korn]

I have both the glassless and glass 4X5 holders for the LPL enlarger, and I find myself using the glass holder more often than not. I also use the glass 4X5 holder for printing 6X6, 6X7, 6X9 and 6X12 negatives - perhaps you don't need to get any MF holders.

Edited to add: I've dealt with KHB for various bits and bobs for my enlarger, and have had a great experience every time.

[Toyon]

The LPL is a pleasure to use. The LPL carriers have guides that place the carrier in the correct position everytime you use them. You'll enjoy using it more if you use the carriers that were designed for it. On that basis its worth buying them.

[Eric Biggerstaff]

I use the Saunders and it is great. I have several of the carriers and as Toyon said, they make the enlarger easy to use. I no longer use most of them however as I made a D/B masking carrier which is very easy to make and keeps the neg very flat. You can check out Alan Ross's website for instructions. The carrier is made out of glass and frosted plexi and one holder can handle many formats, just cut a mask out of construction paper to fit the size you need.

[Oren Grad]

I have a 4500II with pretty much a complete set of carriers. Actually, you could say more than complete - I bought an extra 35mm carrier which I carved out to make a glassless full-frame-with-border carrier for my small format snapshots.

I use both the glassless and the glass carriers, depending on what I'm trying to accomplish. Keeping dust out of the glass carrier is something of an issue, so I use it mostly for special purposes. (But bear in mind that I don't make big enlargements - 2x is usually as far as I'd go from 4x5, maybe 3x from medium format and 5x from 35mm.) I also obtained a piece of coated glass as a replacement for the bottom glass, because I was occasionally getting Newton's rings from the *emulsion* side of TMX in the glass carrier.

If you get the glass carrier for use with smaller formats, the optional masking stage is handy, though the mask can't close down small enough for 35mm. The other thing the masking stage is useful for is that it provides nooks and crannies into which you can stuff shims if you're trying to align the negative stage with the rest of the enlarger.

[J_Tardiff]

I knew this was the right place to ask....

I suspected that the Omega 5 negative holders in the LPL were a bit of a kludge as I figured there would have been more info about them otherwise. So that is solved, I'll stick with the official LPL versions.

So I will definitely invest in the 4x5 glass holder, if I have gone to the effort to upgrade the enlarger and I currently use decent (El-Nikkor) lenses, seems a bit of a step backwards to not optimize film flatness. Maybe the best way to go about this will be to look at my printing backlog and buy 1 new holder/month until I work through everything. Going to be tough to decide between the 6x7 and 4x5 as I have a some nice negatives from a recent trip with the Mamiya 7II. Hmmm.

Eric-- I didn't see any holder instructions on Alan's site. I've followed his work for a long time (keep trying to get back to New Mexico myself). Did enjoy the write-up on the CompnTemp timer-- have been thinking about it as I have a 12" Powerbook gathering dust.

I am intrigued by the masking stage as many people seem to like it, but that will be a later purchase. Might send my better half right around the bend.

Thanks to all,

Jil

[Eric Biggerstaff]

Just drop Alan a note, he might have a file he can send.