I got the Durst condenser head working a few minutes ago. With the stuff Jack sent me I placed the Femocon 50 and 80 condensers in combination along with a recessed lens board and the Durst 1200 condenser head and now everything is working A-OK!! It did not take long to set up once I had all the parts, maybe 20 minutes. All the years of enlarger experience plus a bit of research online in the last few weeks made everything go fast.
I also put together 2 negative carriers, one a glassless carrier with special metal inserts for 35mm and one a glass carrier. My third carrier needs a bit of maintenance, I will take it to work next week and fix it up. First I had no carriers, now I have 3, go figure!
Will take a nap and then start printing with the condenser enlarger tonight. They make the claim in the manual that the condenser enlarger is prints the sharpest photo and has more contrast. I think the contrast thing is true but not sure about their sharpness claim. I gues I will find out.
I had to set up a whole shelf area for my extra enlarger lens. I have another 7 set up on various enlargers as well. Not sure what the total number of enlarger lens I own now, probably around 30-35. The new ones I am most excited by are a 240mm Rodenstock for the 8x10 enlarger a new slightly different style 50mm El Nikkor 2.8 and a 60mm Rodenstock (cannot find a workable lens board for it yet). I will work with all these new lens and find out which works best and move on from there. I also now own 2 of those triple lens rotating boards for the Durst 5x7 and 8x10 as well as 2 more single lens boards for the same machines.
To many options I could definitely open up a second or even a third darkroom with no problems, I have enough gear to do that quite easily. It is always good to have backups as things break quite often. Recently I broke my Saunders 4x5 glass carrier and now I have one for my Durst 4x5. I also was able to cut down some extra 6x6 filters to 4 5/8 by 4 5/8. Having backups is always a good thingy.
Update: I forgot to mention another wonderful lens Jack gave me, a 135mm El-Nikkor. I now have 2-50mm, a 80mm, 2-105mm, 135mm, 150mm, 210mm and 240mm versions of this wonderful enlarging lens. I love both the enlarger and view camera Nikon lens, they are my overall favourites. When I make view camera photos I shoot a 150mm Nikon with my 4x5 and used a 300mm Nikon for all my sex worker on white pics. So the Nikon lens are on both ends of the process for me.
I also put together 2 negative carriers, one a glassless carrier with special metal inserts for 35mm and one a glass carrier. My third carrier needs a bit of maintenance, I will take it to work next week and fix it up. First I had no carriers, now I have 3, go figure!
Will take a nap and then start printing with the condenser enlarger tonight. They make the claim in the manual that the condenser enlarger is prints the sharpest photo and has more contrast. I think the contrast thing is true but not sure about their sharpness claim. I gues I will find out.
I had to set up a whole shelf area for my extra enlarger lens. I have another 7 set up on various enlargers as well. Not sure what the total number of enlarger lens I own now, probably around 30-35. The new ones I am most excited by are a 240mm Rodenstock for the 8x10 enlarger a new slightly different style 50mm El Nikkor 2.8 and a 60mm Rodenstock (cannot find a workable lens board for it yet). I will work with all these new lens and find out which works best and move on from there. I also now own 2 of those triple lens rotating boards for the Durst 5x7 and 8x10 as well as 2 more single lens boards for the same machines.
To many options I could definitely open up a second or even a third darkroom with no problems, I have enough gear to do that quite easily. It is always good to have backups as things break quite often. Recently I broke my Saunders 4x5 glass carrier and now I have one for my Durst 4x5. I also was able to cut down some extra 6x6 filters to 4 5/8 by 4 5/8. Having backups is always a good thingy.
Update: I forgot to mention another wonderful lens Jack gave me, a 135mm El-Nikkor. I now have 2-50mm, a 80mm, 2-105mm, 135mm, 150mm, 210mm and 240mm versions of this wonderful enlarging lens. I love both the enlarger and view camera Nikon lens, they are my overall favourites. When I make view camera photos I shoot a 150mm Nikon with my 4x5 and used a 300mm Nikon for all my sex worker on white pics. So the Nikon lens are on both ends of the process for me.
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| Durst 1200 condenser enlarger with peak grain longer neck focuser. |
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| Shelf with some of my enlarger lens, got a ton of these things now. |
