4x5 cropping probs with durst laborator 1200

I have very recently acquired a Durst Laborator with a Femoneg negative carrier. I was lead to believe that it could print 4x5 but there is a touch of cropping if I want to include the negative border on my 4x5 negs; which I absolutely want to do. Am I missing something? I pray that someone has an answer that does not involved the costly acquisition of further neg holders. Thanks in advance, Chloe.

What's the big deal about the neg boarders? That's so last year LOL.

I have the same enlarger and carrier and mine also crops a tiny bit off the ends of my 4x5 negatives, but it's not a problem for me.. There were 2 carriers made for this enlarger, one for the European market and one for the US. I don't remember which is bigger or even which one I have. I think the simplest solution to your problem would be to send your carrier to APUG member Barry Young ( barryyoung@yahoo.com ) who could remove the masking blades and machine the negative opening a bit so the full frame could be printed. Barry does great work at reasonable prices. I'm not sure if you would be able to print other formats after this modification though, so you might need to get another carrier for smaller formats. They do turn up on ebay from time to time. Good luck with your project.

Richard Wasserman

I use a Laborator 138S, so I don't have that exact problem. But I have noticed that if I want the rebate to be printed, I should use 5x7" and not 13x18cm in the glass carrier. The glassless 4x5" and 9x12cm carriers crop off the entire rebate anyway, but they have to hold the negative by something...

If you really want to orint the rebate too, shoot 9x12cm. The holders are different, but fit the same cameras. And the aspect ratio is nicer, too...

Laborator and on and on

For 6x6cm is the glass frame really necessary? there is a lot of light spill. i have bought this thing 2nd hand so i do n't know if there should be glassless 6x6 holders... thnx.

disfromage said:

….There were 2 carriers made for this enlarger, one for the European market and one for the US. I don't remember which is bigger or even which one I have. I think the simplest solution to your problem would be to send your carrier to APUG member Barry Young ( barryyoung@yahoo.com ) who could remove the masking blades and machine the negative opening a bit so the full frame could be printed. Barry does great work at reasonable prices. I'm not sure if you would be able to print other formats after this modification though, so you might need to get another carrier for smaller formats…..

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chloe1 said:

For 6x6cm is the glass frame really necessary? there is a lot of light spill. i have bought this thing 2nd hand so i don't know if there should be glassless 6x6 holders….

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The European carrier is slightly smaller. My understanding is that the Euro carrier has black knobs, while the American carrier has white knobs. If you machine the carrier, do the minimum necessary so that the glassless carrier inserts will still fit (they are the same size as the glass). However, I always use the glass, regardless of the format, and adjust the metal masking blades to cut the light spill.

dirty glass

thanks for the replies, very helpfull. i am finding that the glass that i have is leaving small dust marks and i have scrubbed it like crazy. would using glassless not be better for avoiding this problem?

My understanding is that the L1200 was originally designed for 9x12. The standard Femoneg negative carrier crops 4x5 very slightly. The "Femoneg AM" carrier (I guess "AM" is for American) doesn't.

I clean the glass with glass cleaner and a lint-free cloth. Then I examine the glass in bright light and use an anti-static brush or canned "air" to remove any remaining dust. After that, store the carrier in a plastic bag to keep it clean.

For formats smaller than 4x5 I use metal glassless inserts, but only use the bottom one. I retain the Anti Newton Ring glass in the top part of the carrier to keep the film flat, and there is one less piece of glass to clean. I have to give credit for this idea to Michael Johnston who suggested it to me several years ago and it has made my darkroom life a lot easier. I clean my glass as M. Briggs does above and I don't have a problem with dust.

Richard Wasserman

Hi Chloe, here's a late addition to the other replies... I ran into the very same issue some time ago.

The L1200 was designed for 9x12 cm (the "12" in 1200), the 138 for 13x18 cm and the 184 for 18x24 cm - Durst always stuck with the metric system, and they were close enough for 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10 inches. So printing full neg borders will be out of the question, and even more so if you use Polaroid 55 - you'll need to step up to a 5x7 enlarger if you want borders (as I did).

You may get a small improvement in coverage by removing the thin black metal frame that slides into the negative stage - above the point where the bellows is mounted and just below the metal surface where you slide in the neg carrier. You need to remove the neg carrier and press the frame from the inside. But this is probably as far as you are going to get without spending money and energy on drilling out your neg holder - something I would think twice about.

As for the dirty glass, I'd say you need to get a new clean one. A metal Femomask would be more expensive and harder to find and again it would crop your neg - even more. As Ole said, it has to hold the neg by something!

/Henrik

Hello 4x5 printers,
Here's a much later addition to the topic!
Although the previous explanation for the names Durst gave the enlargers sorta makes sense, the 1000 was also a 4x5" (as well as the 900 with the CLS450 head, I believe), so I don't know what to make of that. I thought it had to do with the available heigth of the column (about 1000 and 1200mm for the enlargers of the same names)...
Nevertheless, to my knowledge there was only one Femoneg for the whole world (mine have either black or brown knobs) and I bet the narrow minded engineers never imagined that anyone would want to print with a black binding, or maybe they thought the Femogla's (glass plates) were good enough for the few weirdos who did. So yes, the standard bottom Femomask's do crop in the image and the top ones are big enough not to, but their straight edges cause problematic reflections.
Back in the day, I started by beveling those with a file and painting the metal flat black. Now I have a complete set of bottom Femomask's (for the useful springy prongs) made bigger and beveled by a machinist.
I think the Femoneg AM came out in the nineties, to make full use of the Pictochrom 5x5 lightbox. Its corners are more open, allowing for the full size of the 4x5 film. Note if the Femomask's do fit in the AM (as shown in the image), only the glasses that come with it cover the whole surface.
Similar topic, the 1200 came with 24x36, 6x6, 6x9 and 4x5" Femobox's. The Pictochrom's are 24x36, 6x7, 4x5" and 5x5". But somehow, the so called 6x7 doesn't cover the whole image, it is lacking a few millimeters in length, which causes about 1cm of a 12x16 print to be significantly lighter. So I only use it for 4,5x6 and 6x6. For 6x7, I have a special Pictobox with the inside of a Femobox 6x9 to which the late Durst USA guy added a top diffusor, necessary with the Pictochrom...

Could anyone tell me if the standard (non-AM) neg carrier crops into the image area itself or just the borders? If so, by how much?

brdo said:

Could anyone tell me if the standard (non-AM) neg carrier crops into the image area itself or just the borders? If so, by how much?

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Just the boarders.
If it's more then it's a lens issue.