Film is like playing a real piano, and digital is like playing a digital piano... Both have a place, but...
Steve K
I dont know, the biggest thing is that the digital age has really hurt the company support for enlargers in the USA.
I combined 2.5 beseler 67c into a single enlarger. All i needed is a bushing for the elevation system. Beseler wont answer me at all. I have personal name emails for two people at beseler. After a week no results from them at all. These two people are full time employess at the factory repair department.
The official beseler condoned repair guy in california merely says "ask beseler". After i sent him a photo of what i needed. SO i sent a picture to the ONLY outhorized beseler repair shop in canada.. and within an hour of getting my email, i was sent the beseler factory part number AND the part number for their home made all brass subsitition that they used to repair enlargers for customers..
Beseler (and other bramds) enlarger parts are on EBAY all the time. It can takes time to find the part you want, because the seller often times does not know the part #, but you can get lucky if good pictures are taken.
At least most enlargers can be repaired in a basic shop, and potentially last many decades longer, unlike digital gear, which seems to be engineered with rapid obsolescence in mind, or at least caters to the "gotta have the latest and greatest" over and over again consumer mentality. Beseler's attitude toward service has been awful for a quite awhile; I wouldn't blame digital for that.
some of the enlarger companies stopped making enlargers before the 2000s. parts and broken enlargers are available on eBay or can be rigged to work, I mean it's just a light source, focus bellows and stand. not really too complicated. old stuff you always need something to scavenge parts from, whether it is a 100 year old camera, or something from the 80s.
Just for yucks, this morning I visited TENSOR.ART, a website that offers free A.I.-generated photos of anything.
I typed in a pretty obscure request: "squaretop mountain wyoming behind lake black and white".
Here's what I got -- pretty darn close to the real thing in 10 seconds. How it decided to add PINE trees and glaciers, remains a mystery.
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