Big prints without easel

I would like to enlarge onto 18x22 or 20x24 but don't have an easel that big.
In order to go that big I have to swing the column of my LPL VC7700 180 degrees to point away from the base board onto the floor. The lens board has a tilt-shift function built in to align it parallel to the floor.
I have a large cutting mat with a grid pattern that's kind of handy when aligning paper on it.
Would taping down or putting heavy weights on the edges work or are there other complications I am not thinking about?

I used to do 20x24 with my previous enlarger, a Beseler 45MX by installing a piece of sheet metal onto the baseboard and using magnets attached to 1" plexi strips. I simply used gaffers tape to put the magnets on and could see the edge of the paper through the plexi.

I had to do this because I could not fit my 20x24 Saunders easel onto the baseboard with the image centered. I bet you could basically do the same thing with a very flat piece of MDF or marine ply and have it be effective. Just make sure you paint the sheet metal a good flat finish color, you don't want shiny metal to reflect and fog the paper.

I went the magnetic route because then the paper is secure and can not be accidentally moved out of place between burn sequences if I were to bump it with something.

I'm not sure what the plexi was needed for. Can you explain?
Also, what is MDF?

Medium Density Fibre board (MDF)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium-density_fibreboard

Mick.

The strips of plexi were to help distribute more even pressure over the edges of the paper. So there were 4 X 1" inch strips in all, two 20" and two 23" that had several 3/4" X 1.5" rare earth magnets evenly spaced and then I used a half a dozen 3/4" circular regular magnets free form to put in areas I felt that needed it.

I would use the small circular magnets to rough in the paper placement and then start applying the plexi strips that had either two or three rare earth magnets taped to them to fully secure it.

I chose clear plexi over other materials so I could minimize how much paper I covered when doing this, other things that were opaque ended up being either a guessing game as to where the edge of the paper was or simply covered too much of it for my liking.

I think I have some photos somewhere, I'll see if I can dig them up tomorrow.

ericdan said:

The lens board has a tilt-shift function

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The tilt-shift is for correcting converging lines on negatives exposed without a tilt-shift lens on the camera. If not correcting converging lines, the lens and negative always need to be be perpendicular to each other, no matter where you are projecting. There should be a separate adjustment for that and it will be essential that it is perfect when doing a big enlargement. The focal spread at the paper side is pretty large, you can hold down the edges of the paper with any kind of weight.

If you put down a sheet of steel on your easel , then you can use magnets in preset positions to position your work and secondary magnets to hold the paper.

the magnets I use are long and narrow and it is easy to set up a position setup.

Bob Carnie said:

If you put down a sheet of steel on your easel , then you can use magnets in preset positions to position your work and secondary magnets to hold the paper.

the magnets I use are long and narrow and it is easy to set up a position setup.

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that sounds like a very good solution. I'll give that a try. Thanks

ic-racer said:

If not correcting converging lines, the lens and negative always need to be be perpendicular to each other, no matter where you are projecting.

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Errrm, perhaps that could be clarified to "len-axis and negative" being perpendicular, or say that the lens-mount and neg-carrier should be parallel and the lens-axis perpendicular to the paper?

When I have done this over-the-table projection I have used a piece of chipboard as the subsitute-baseboard and aligned it by means of three wedges underneath and a Versalab laser tool on top, bouncing off the neg-carrier bottom-glass.

Another option is to point the enlarger head at the wall and then a magnetic noticeboard, mounted on the wall, makes a handy substitute-easel. Alignment again by using the Versalab. They are certainly not essential tools (and these days can be homemade from laser-levels etc.), but they speed things up and reduce the temptation to accept a vague more-or-less squared up projection.

hi

i use/used a trash can , a sheet of plywood to put hte paper on ( counter top works ok and is cheap )
AND a sheet of clean glass. i haven't printed that big in a while but it worked fine when i did it that way.
good luck !

MartinP said:

Errrm, perhaps that could be clarified to "len-axis and negative" being perpendicular, or say that the lens-mount and neg-carrier should be parallel and the lens-axis perpendicular to the paper?

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You can almost ignore the paper plane with big enlargements. If you set a lens on a table, would one say it is pointing up or parallel to the table?

If one shines a laser into an enlarging lens it forms a reflection of concentric rings. I use these rings to find the optical axis. Then remove the lens and the laser should bounce off the carrier glass to the same spot (the center of where the rings were).

I just went through a similar exercise, enlarging my 4"x5" dry plate to 16" X 20". I use a DeJure enlarger with a 135 mm enlarging lens.

I don't have an easel that large, so I had to "wing it". Ahead of time I found a board to which I taped a sheet of construction paper which I had cut to 16" X 20". I can see where this paper is under safelight and it allows me to set focus, framing, etc.

This is what you might be interested in: I found that the depth of focus for this size enlargement was sufficient such that I could simply lay the photo paper down and expose without holding the edges down.

All in all I was pleased with the results and - more importantly - my wife likes the results. The print is huge compared to what I'm used to and the detail holds up very well for a hand-coated dry plate negative exposed in a 125 yr old camera. She is currently trying to figure where she can hang the framed print.

Man, I went pretty ghetto with my big prints - went to Harbor Freight and bought a selection of framing squares - those are L-shaped pieces of steel or aluminum, as big as 3' x 4' long, and pretty heavy. Just lay 'em on the paper border, worked fine for me - even with my ancient stashes of 16x20 lith paper that's curled like crazy.

I do like some blank paper under the matte when I frame a big print, so I keep a bunch of black posterboard (really like heavy construction paper) and just cut precise windows in it with an exacto. I work out the size and crop on some old 16x20 RC paper and use that as a guide to cut the black paper, which acts as an easel - then the framing squares hold it all down.

Here's a 16x20 sheet - the holes on the edge were made with a standard 3-ring punch, and I taped register pins to the table and "hinged" the poster board with tape so I could repeat things and keep the crop aligned with the paper (the pins made it easy to get the paper in the exact same place every time). Really worked just fine.

M Carter said:

Here's a 16x20 sheet - the holes on the edge were made with a standard 3-ring punch, and I taped register pins to the table and "hinged" the poster board with tape so I could repeat things and keep the crop aligned with the paper (the pins made it easy to get the paper in the exact same place every time). Really worked just fine.

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I like this idea!

Excellent ideas. Framing squares work fine, as mentioned. If you have some flat wood, that is good for a base too. Basically, just use what you have, or head to a Big Box store like Home Depot and sleuth around a little, you'll find all sort of ideas and stuff there.

In the end, what I had was a coffee table w/ a glass top. So I simply popped the glass out (it was just sitting on there), and laid it on the enlarger's base board. The easiest and most elegant solution may be M Carter's idea of the black mat. Lay the glass (or whatever) on the enlarger's base board w/ some black paper under it, place the printing paper on top that, then place the black mat on top of that, which will hold all the edges flat and give you the clean borders.

I also found out that DOF will easily take care of any curling issues.

You could make a vacuum easel from a sheet of fiber board used for tool mounting. The sheet is predrilled with holes every inch. Use an old vacuum cleaner for the suction. The easel can be either for a fixed sized print or for multiple sizes if you cover the holes not used for the print.

Gerald C Koch said:

You could make a vacuum easel from a sheet of fiber board used for tool mounting. The sheet is predrilled with holes every inch. Use an old vacuum cleaner for the suction. The easel can be either for a fixed sized print or for multiple sizes if you cover the holes not used for the print.

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This is suggested often, but I'm wondering if this has really worked for anyone (not saying it hasn't!) I worked in a graphic arts shop and we had vacuum easels all over the place - but the holes were more like a fine mesh, maybe less than 1mm per hole. Those big pegboard holes seem like they'd suck the paper in and leave little "dots" - unless you were really easy on the pressure?

M Carter said:

This is suggested often, but I'm wondering if this has really worked for anyone (not saying it hasn't!) I worked in a graphic arts shop and we had vacuum easels all over the place - but the holes were more like a fine mesh, maybe less than 1mm per hole. Those big pegboard holes seem like they'd suck the paper in and leave little "dots" - unless you were really easy on the pressure?

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I second that, I too have worked in a Graphic Arts trade house, all of the vacuum easels were a darkish plastic type of material, the holes were around the 1mm or slightly less and were obviously done with CNC precision as the easel boards had lines in 10mm increments horizontally and vertically with the drilled holes in the dead centre of each square.

In our conventional photographic darkrooms, we also had the same easel but done more to standard enlarging paper sizes. I think the smallest one was about 200mm square, the medium one was about 500mm square but the larger one was about 800mmx650mm which was used for 24x30" paper. We had strips of plastic the same size as the easels in various widths, from 20mm wide to about 100mm wide in 10mm increments. The idea being that you could cover the uncovered holes without having any, or maybe only a little bit of plastic hanging over the edge of the easel.

We had some special vacuum easels made just for film, two sizes, 4x5" and 8x10" with about a 5mm oversize on all edges for both sizes. The best part about these easels, was that we also had bottled clean air that was filtered for moisture, continuously blowing air across the top of the film being exposed. That compressed clean air was a godsend for eliminating (almost) all dust particles and was about the only way we could consistently make colour transparency enlargements from colour C41 negatives that were, to all intents and purposes, blemish free, as well as being colour corrected.

The film duplicating set-up had vacuum motors that ran brushless AC motors. We are talking the early 80's here, they were so expensive that only the darkrooms doing film duplication and various other manipulations, had those motors. The reason for brushless motors is because they didn't have any sparking flashes in the darkroom when running.

The other places with vacuum easels all ran reasonably standard industry vacuum systems from the graphic arts industry, meaning they were big, expensive and either sourced from the USA , usually Dupont, or from Germany, usually Klimsch.

Mick.