An inexpensive, effective enlarger alignment tool

[jstraw]

Hmmmm, don't think its any better than a spirit level.

I don't plan to use it for leveling. It's a lazer. It's really cheap. I'm going to point it straight up and use a mirror to align first the neg stage then the lens stage.

 

[RobC]

I don't plan to use it for leveling. It's a lazer. It's really cheap. I'm going to point it straight up and use a mirror to align first the neg stage then the lens stage.

And how do you know it will be pointing straight up?

 

[RobC]

The point of a laser alignment tool such as the versalab is that it guarantees that the laser is perpendicular to the base of the versalab and therefore perpendicular to any flat surface you place it on. It does not point straight up through gravity like a plumb bob.
The name of the game with aligning your enlarger is getting parallelism between your easel and the film plane and the lens axis perpendicular to those parallel planes. The planes could be 1 deg out from a plumb bob, but providing they are parallel then that is what you want.

That ball you are looking at is aligned using a normal spirit level. The laser just points at 90 degrees to the spirit bubble if it has been set accurately.
Therefore it is only good for gravity vertical like a plumb bob. The way it seems to work is by moving the ball in its holder until the spirit level bubble is centred and that tells you that the laser is pointing straight up. But only for the direction the level is pointing. But what if your baseboard/easel is not level? Well straight up won't be perpendicular to your baseboard/easel which means you won't get parallelism with the negative plane. So you will have to set your baseboard with a spirit level.
i.e. its no better than a normal spirit level because it doesn't work by giving the perpendicular axis to the surface it is resting on. And it is set using its own spirit level so it can't be any more accurate than a spirit level.

 

[jstraw]

And how do you know it will be pointing straight up?

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

 

[jstraw]

The point of a laser alignment tool such as the versalab is that it guarantees that the laser is perpendicular to the base of the versalab and therefore perpendicular to any flat surface you place it on. It does not point straight up through gravity like a plumb bob.
The name of the game with aligning your enlarger is getting parallelism between your easel and the film plane and the lens axis perpendicular to those parallel planes. The planes could be 1 deg out from a plumb bob, but providing they are parallel then that is what you want.

That ball you are looking at is aligned using a normal spirit level. The laser just points at 90 degrees to the spirit bubble if it has been set accurately.
Therefore it is only good for gravity vertical like a plumb bob. The way it seems to work is by moving the ball in its holder until the spirit level bubble is centred and that tells you that the laser is pointing straight up. But only for the direction the level is pointing. But what if your baseboard/easel is not level? Well straight up won't be perpendicular to your baseboard/easel which means you won't get parallelism with the negative plane. So you will have to set your baseboard with a spirit level.
i.e. its no better than a normal spirit level because it doesn't work by giving the perpendicular axis to the surface it is resting on. And it is set using its own spirit level so it can't be any more accurate than a spirit level.

I plan on completely ignoring the spirit level on it. It may as well not have one. With it's mounting cup and some bluetack and your method, I will have the laser perpendicular to the base. I will attach the mounting cup to a piece of wood with a hole in the bottom that will fit over the spindle of a properly level turntable. When I'm done with your procedure, I will be able to move the wood base, mounting cup and the ball...all attached to one another and it won't matter if the base of the enlarger is level or not.

 

[RobC]

fair enough. Good luck.

 

[HowBoutThemRedSox]

Enlarger Alignment

This Precision Enlarger Alignment System_APUG description is a cut down version from a 1.18 Mb file for APUG.
I can email the detailed version directly to anyone that is interested.
Ken Kaiser

Can you e-mail the full version to dclarkson@woh.rr.com?

Thank you

 

[Don Wallace]

Especially when guys like my dad use them to pack the dirt around post holes. He's been doing it that way for at least 30years! I couldn't ever convince him it was a bad idea.

If the posts are still solidly in the ground, who can argue?