Can’t sharpen grain an inch out

Started using my enlarger again after having it in storage for a year. I have made a bunch of prints and they’re all coming out extremely fuzzy at f22. So I did a test, stuck half a negative in the carrier so that the numbering on the sprocket hole is dead center on the paper and a quarter of an image is in each corner. My findings? If the sprocket info is pin sharp in the center, it’s completely fuzzy on the image only an inch away. My equipment isn’t great- a beseler 23c, beseler entry level lens, glassless negative carrier, but I would expect to be able to at least print sharp 5x7 images. I’m curious if this is symptomatic of a specific enlarger issue I can try to rectify, since I can’t seen to figure it out intuitively.

A 23C is a pretty good enlarger. It sounds to me like an enlarger misalignment. Your negative stage, easel & baseboard all have to be level & parallel to one another. Beselers are not impossible...but quirky to align. Google might help....i've been there myself with a B45MXT.

Have you inspected the lens for defects or fungus? Aside from film being badly curved, or enlarger out of parallel, the lens having problems can mess up the sharpness too.

Most lenses produce their best resolving power and evenness of illumination closed 2 stops from wide open. For example, an f/3.5 or f/4 lens is best at about f/8, but might also do well at f/5.6.

Used at f/22, the projection will be relatively dark and take a long time to expose the paper. With such a long printing time, the negative will get warm. The top gets the warmest. That causes the negative to expand upward and “belly” out of the shallow depth of field about the negative. As a result, the projection will become badly defocused.

Any enlargers equipped with condenser lighting systems, such as the Beseler 23C, are efficient at concentrating the light. Unfortunately, that includes the heat generated by the lamp. The Beseler 23C enlargers can be equipped with a 5.5” x 5.5” x 1/8” heat-absorbing glass filter that is installed in the slot just above the filter drawer and just below the lamp.

That will absorb most of the excess heat from the light before it reaches the negative and help prevent the negative from heating so that it stays reasonably flat and within the depth of field about the focused negative. Simply choosing a larger aperture will reduce the printing time and the amount of heat transmitted to the negative during the shorter exposure time.

Using f/22 instead of f/8 requires 3 stops or 8 times more printing time. Using f/22 instead of f/5.6 requires 4 stops or 16 times more printing time. I think that you’re “cooking” your negatives unnecessarily.

For the best film flatness, use a heat-absorbing-glass filter in the top slot and a glass negative carrier. The glass carrier keeps the negative restrained between two sheets of glass and within the depth of field about the negative. This combination provides a consistently well-focused projection.

welcome...

Sounds like it is way out of alignment. The negative carrier, lens board/lens, and to a lesser extent the baseboard all need to be parallel. It sounds like the lens stage might have been whacked. Check that it is parallel to the neg carrier. That is more important than anything else. IIRC the plastic gears on the 23C tend to jump track, so check and see if those are at the same level.

With how much paper costs these days and how little great enlarger lenses are, there is no reason to use a cheap lens, but a cheap lens wouldn't cause your problem.

Hope that helps you.

Could be diffraction. Using a grain focuser, is the grain still soft at the edges? If it isn't, try adding an ND filter to use a couple of stops wider aperture. To my knowledge, most enlarging lenses are best from wide-open to a few stops down.

horribleflesheater said:

I have made a bunch of prints and they’re all coming out extremely fuzzy at f22

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• Do you mean that no part of the image comes out sharp? not even the one for which you adjusted the focus?
  
• How do you adjust focus? visually at max aperture? with a grain focuser? (in the latter case, are you confident your grain focuser is properly adjusted?
  
• If the part of the image for which you adjusted focus does come out sharp, does the print become progressively soft as one moves away from the adjustment point?

I will ask the regular 23C users here - could severe problems with the plane of focus be due to problems with the condensors?

MattKing said:

could severe problems with the plane of focus be due to problems with the condensors?

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No way. Only stuff between film and paper can affect sharpness. Condensor is responsible for even illumination.

Regarding post #9:

No. the condensers only concentrate the light from the lamphouse, focusing it into to a circle not much larger in diameter than the diagonal of the negative. The lens merely projects the image of the back-illuminated negative onto the image plane (where the paper is placed).

If the experiment of post #1 was done with a 6 x 9 cm glass carrier (only size made for the 23C that I'm aware of) and the same results were obtained, then I’d suspect the adjustment of the lens stage (it can be pivoted from side to side for perspective correction). But misalignment strong enough to cause the severe focus error mentioned in post #1 would be quite obvious. This might be caused by severe “popping” of the negative as explained in post #4.

I’ve owned and used Beseler 23CII enlargers for years and am familiar with it and its adjustments and so forth.

Ian C said:

Most lenses produce their best resolving power and evenness of illumination closed 2 stops from wide open. For example, an f/3.5 or f/4 lens is best at about f/8, but might also do well at f/5.6.

Used at f/22, the projection will be relatively dark and take a long time to expose the paper. With such a long printing time, the negative will get warm. The top gets the warmest. That causes the negative to expand upward and “belly” out of the shallow depth of field about the negative. As a result, the projection will become badly defocused.

Any enlargers equipped with condenser lighting systems, such as the Beseler 23C, are efficient at concentrating the light. Unfortunately, that includes the heat generated by the lamp. The Beseler 23C enlargers can be equipped with a 5.5” x 5.5” x 1/8” heat-absorbing glass filter that is installed in the slot just above the filter drawer and just below the lamp.

That will absorb most of the excess heat from the light before it reaches the negative and help prevent the negative from heating so that it stays reasonably flat and within the depth of field about the focused negative. Simply choosing a larger aperture will reduce the printing time and the amount of heat transmitted to the negative during the shorter exposure time.

Using f/22 instead of f/8 requires 3 stops or 8 times more printing time. Using f/22 instead of f/5.6 requires 4 stops or 16 times more printing time. I think that you’re “cooking” your negatives unnecessarily.

For the best film flatness, use a heat-absorbing-glass filter in the top slot and a glass negative carrier. The glass carrier keeps the negative restrained between two sheets of glass and within the depth of field about the negative. This combination provides a consistently well-focused projection.

Click to expand...

Ah I’ll look into that. F22 was a choice made to elongate exposure times, as at f8 printing 5x7 exposure times were so short I couldn’t do any dodging and burning. As is, my exposure with a 2 1/2 filter is 20 seconds as a baseline. Would the glass filter aid in increasing those times?

bernard_L said:

• Do you mean that no part of the image comes out sharp? not even the one for which you adjusted the focus?
  
• How do you adjust focus? visually at max aperture? with a grain focuser? (in the latter case, are you confident your grain focuser is properly adjusted?
  
• If the part of the image for which you adjusted focus does come out sharp, does the print become progressively soft as one moves away from the adjustment point?

Click to expand...

The image is sharp where I focus but radiating out from that point goes out of focus. I can’t keep it consistently sharp across the composition.

I’ve been eyeballing it at max aperture, then stopping down to f8 to adjust critical focus with a focuser. I’m pretty confident the focuser is doing it’s job, it’s brand new. I’d say your last point is on the money, that seems to be the case.

The HAG filter reduces the light delivered to the print by about 1/3 stop as measured with a Minolta Flashmeter IV. So, you could open the aperture about 1/3 stop to compensate and still use the same printing time.

Or, a 20-second printing time without altering the aperture, but with the HAG filter, would now require 25.2 seconds.

Assuming that you have the lens stage locked so that the fixed pointer matches the white index line on the lens stage, then the stage is likely reasonably parallel to the negative stage. If so, then projection should be fine from left to right insofar as the parallelism of the lens stage to the negative stage is concerned.

If this is the case, then I have to suppose that you have a bad case of negative “popping” as described in post #4.

Your comment,

“The image is sharp where I focus but radiating out from that point goes out of focus. I can’t keep it consistently sharp across the composition.”

sounds very much like what I observe with any condenser enlarger lacking a heat-absorbing filter, glass carrier, or both (worst case).

Properly set up, which might require a HAG filter and a glass negative carrier, the Beseler 23C can deliver prints as good as from any other enlarger.

Ian C said:

The HAG filter reduces the light delivered to the print by about 1/3 stop as measured with a Minolta Flashmeter IV. So, you could open the aperture about 1/3 stop to compensate and still use the same printing time.

Or, a 20-second printing time without altering the aperture, but with the HAG filter, would now require 25.2 seconds.

Assuming that you have the lens stage locked so that the fixed pointer matches the white index line on the lens stage, then the stage is likely reasonably parallel to the negative stage. If so, then projection should be fine from left to right insofar as the parallelism of the lens stage to the negative stage is concerned.

If this is the case, then I have to suppose that you have a bad case of negative “popping” as described in post #4.

Your comment,

“The image is sharp where I focus but radiating out from that point goes out of focus. I can’t keep it consistently sharp across the composition.”

sounds very much like what I observe with any condenser enlarger lacking a heat-absorbing filter, glass carrier, or both (worst case).

Properly set up, which might require a HAG filter and a glass negative carrier, the Beseler 23C can deliver prints as good as from any other enlarger.

Click to expand...

I would think the opposite: negative popping would make the center got out of focus rather than the edges. Once again, the use of an ND filter will allow you to use a larger f-stop. Also focus with the lens wide open, not stopped down. Stopping down will only make it harder to focus and hide any critical focus problems.

horribleflesheater said:

The image is sharp where I focus but radiating out from that point goes out of focus. I can’t keep it consistently sharp across the composition.

I’ve been eyeballing it at max aperture, then stopping down to f8 to adjust critical focus with a focuser. I’m pretty confident the focuser is doing it’s job, it’s brand new. I’d say your last point is on the money, that seems to be the case.

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Hi Horribleflesheater,

In your OP you say you're using an entry-level enlarging lens. That sounds like it's causing your problem; been there, done that. Cheap, three-element lenses are fine for small prints but have difficulty projecting images that are sharp from cornet to corner. Get yourself at least a four-element enlarging lens from a known high-quality brand if you want to make sharp prints.

Other points to think about (some covered above; some not):

What size prints are you making? The larger the print, the worse your focus problems will be.

Is your negative being held flat in the neg carrier? It's impossible to achieve cornet-to-corner sharpness from a less-than-flat negative. If the negative is popping with the heat of the bulb, try an LED light source.

Are your neg carrier, lens and baseboard parallel? Some enlargers allow the neg stage to be adjusted out-of-plane. Some heads have a swing adjustment for wall projection. If all of these are not parallel, you'll get fuzzy prints.

Good luck and cheers,
kevs.

You can always get a sheet of ND lighting gel (I use 2-stop) and cut it to fit your filter slot; a big sheet is like $8, enough to make a bunch of filters. You can put a couple sheets in to cut exposure significantly.

For enlargers that have crappy or non-existent alignment control, the old Besalign boards are pretty awesome. Here's a PDF I made to DIY one.

If you really want to get serious about enlarger alignment, a Versalab Parallel aligner is the absolute shizz. $200 or so, worth every penny, maybe more necessary when printing big. "Way Beyond Monochrome" has DIY plans for a similar unit.

Regarding post 15. If the lamp is on long enough during composing, focusing and then grain focusing, and the user focuses near the center of the image with the negative popped, the film will have bellied-up in the center, while leaving the edges clamped at a lower height. The outer edge areas don’t get nearly as warm, since the upper and lower plates of the negative carrier act as a heat sink. Such a popped negative cannot be projected with uniform focus.

In this case, when the exposure is made, the popped center will be in focus, while the rest of the negative falls out of focus radially, because the rest of the negative lies progressively below the plane of focus established about the popped center.

If, on the other hand, the center is focused quickly before the negative warms enough to pop, then when the relatively long exposure is made, the negative will pop leaving the edges in focus, but progressively out of focus towards the center. Recall that the original poster claimed f/22 to obtain longer printing time for burning & dodging.

Thus, a popped negative can produce a sharp center progressively blurred radially outward, or sharp outer areas with a blurred center, depending on how it was focused. Too, some workers have tried to compromise by focusing at a point midway form center to corner and then using a smaller-than-usual aperture in the hope that the increased depth of field will mask the problem.

Nothing works nearly as well as the following combination:

1. Use a HAG filter to remove as much heat as possible. This is not needed with a dichroic-filtered head, as it has its own heat-absorbing (or heat-reflecting) filter built-in.

2. Use a glass carrier.

“Junk Triplet” lens? Maybe not.

I have made many very good prints with the ubiquitous 50/3.5 and 75/3.5 Cooke Triplet enlarging lenses supplied by Marumi Optical Company and marked "JAPAN". The actual manufacturer is unknown. These are marked under many brandings (at least 54 per my count), but a close examination reveals that they are identical—almost certainly made by the same maker. I amused myself a few years ago by collecting the brandings.

I read many comments about these “crappy lenses”. By discussing these privately with folks that got prints that were sharp is some areas and fuzzy in others, I learned that most of them were acquired with a condenser enlarger without the benefit of a heat-absorbing filter or glass negative carrier. By listening to their tales of woe, I realized that I had the same terrible focus problems they did with a then newly-acquired Beseler 23CII.

I then got a Beseler 8042 heat-absorbing glass filter for the upper filter slot. This mostly cured the problem. I still got some somewhat unsharp areas with sufficiently-long printing times. This was worse with overly-dense negatives. I presume that denser negatives absorb more heat and tend to belly upward worse than a negative of more average density.

When I added a glass carrier the problem disappeared entirely. Now the “crappy triplet” produces nice prints with good definition. The common 3- or 4-element “beginners” lens often gets blamed for a problem having nothing to do with the lens.

Ian C said:

The common 3- or 4-element “beginners” lens often gets blamed for a problem having nothing to do with the lens.

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+1
Triplet lenses perform very well in cameras at apertures f:8 or smaller; so, at f:22 one should worry more about diffraction than optical aberrations, but even diffraction would not have any visible effect when trying "to at least print sharp 5x7 images".

Ian C said:

<snip>

“Junk Triplet” lens? Maybe not.

I have made many very good prints with the ubiquitous 50/3.5 and 75/3.5 Cooke Triplet enlarging lenses supplied by Marumi Optical Company and marked "JAPAN". The actual manufacturer is unknown. These are marked under many brandings (at least 54 per my count), but a close examination reveals that they are identical—almost certainly made by the same maker. I amused myself a few years ago by collecting the brandings.

I read many comments about these “crappy lenses”. By discussing these privately with folks that got prints that were sharp is some areas and fuzzy in others, I learned that most of them were acquired with a condenser enlarger without the benefit of a heat-absorbing filter or glass negative carrier. By listening to their tales of woe, I realized that I had the same terrible focus problems they did with a then newly-acquired Beseler 23CII.

I then got a Beseler 8042 heat-absorbing glass filter for the upper filter slot. This mostly cured the problem. I still got some somewhat unsharp areas with sufficiently-long printing times. This was worse with overly-dense negatives. I presume that denser negatives absorb more heat and tend to belly upward worse than a negative of more average density.

When I added a glass carrier the problem disappeared entirely. Now the “crappy triplet” produces nice prints with good definition. The common 3- or 4-element “beginners” lens often gets blamed for a problem having nothing to do with the lens.

Click to expand...

</snip>

I'm not saying you're incorrect, Ian -- after all everyone's experience is different. I will say, however, that when I 'retired' my Meopta 50 mm triplet on my ancient Opemus II enlarger and replaced it with an equivalent Minolta 4-element lens (due to the Opemus' non-standard thread I made a lens stage using a jam-jar lid!), the sharpness of my prints from 35mm negs improved dramatically. I also had a Rodenstock Trinar 70 mm lens that never produced an entirely sharp print for me; its Minolta 4-element replacement brought me an immediate improvement in sharpness and definition. Hence, my suspicion falls upon the OP's enlarging lens as a probable weakness in his/her printmaking equipment. But what do I know? Not much, apparently.

IMO, the few extra pounds / dollars / dollarpounds spent on a better-quality 4-element lens is worthwhile to avoid the frustration that often results from the use of poor-quality kit.. Even if I'm incorrect, though, better kit is better kit; unless one's a Lomography-touting hipster, I suppose.

Cheers,
kevs

My experience was with a Beseler 23CII, a robust, well-made enlarger equipped with an adjustable condenser lamp head. One of the remedies I tried was a 50/2.8 APO Rodagon (bought new). It made no difference. With the APO Rodagon, the projection was no different insofar as the radially-graduated fuzziness was concerned. The projection was well-defined at the edges and progressively fuzzy radially inward towards the center when focused quickly before the negative popped.

If I waited for the negative to “pop” before focusing, then the central part of the image was well-defined, but progressively fuzzy outward. Apparently, the lens was not responsible for the problem. The problem in this case was the heated negative.

The 50 mm and 75 mm f/3.5 triplets I tested are: Omegar (Omega enlarger company), Beslar (Beseler enlarger company), and Prinz (photo products distributor). They appear to be from the same maker. When taken apart for cleaning they all have identical parts, so far as I can tell. These same lenses produce satisfying prints on the same enlarger when equipped with a heat-absorbing filter and glass carrier.

If a particular enlarger exhibits these symptoms with lens A, but the problem disappears with lens B, then obviously lens A is defective and should not be used. Putting a superior lens onto an enlarger with a badly heat-popped negative won’t help.

On Sunday, September 8, 2019 I did the following test. I selected a good 35 mm black-and-white negative and put it into the glass carrier of my Beseler 23CII with condenser head. The Beseler 8042 heat-absorbing filter is installed in the upper filter slot below the lamp (PH-111).

I used my Japanese-made Beslar 50/3.5 (Cooke Triplet) set to f/8. I sized the image at about 9X to make a borderless 8” x 10” print on Oriental RC glossy paper. The focus was fine-tuned with a Bestwell 25X Microsight grain focuser. I made a couple of test patches to to determine the required filter to obtain the desired contrast and the exposure time for the density wanted. Then I used an Hakuba Photo Marker to mark a back corner of the 8” x 10” print with a “B” to indicate that this print was made with the Beslar lens.

Before removing the lens, I used my Ilford EM-10 enlarging meter on a selected medium-tone area and zeroed the meter to get the green LED. That requires the user to set the dial at a particular reference number.

Next, I replaced the Beslar lens with a 50/2.8N EL Nikkor (6-element 4-group Double Gauss) lens. I had to resize the image slightly because the EL Nikkor is a slightly longer focal length, 52.0 mm per Nikon’s data sheet. I repeated all the above steps and fine-tuned the f/8 aperture very slightly so that the EM-10 meter’s green LED lit when its photocell was placed over the same reference area of the projected image. I made the second print with the EL Nikkor and marked one back corner with an “N”.

I sat the finished and dried prints side by side in good light. Both are good, with uniform focus from center to corners. The resolution I see with my reading glasses is about the same for both prints. The only noticeable difference is: the EL Nikkor did a better job at preserving the contrast inherent in the negative. Such differences in contrast are often misjudged as “better resolution”. I estimate that the difference is about one-half paper grade, or somewhat less. The adjustment needed to make both prints match in contrast is easily obtained with a filter adjustment.

I speculate that the light-absorbing blackening of the inside of the barrel and cells of the EL Nikkor are superior to that of the Beslar. Other than the contrast, I see no meaningful differences between these two 8” x 10” prints when viewed with reading glasses. At a “normal viewing distance” (whatever that is) and adjusted for equal contrast, there is no discernable difference between these two prints.

Ian C said:

I see no meaningful differences between these two 8” x 10” prints when viewed with reading glasses. At a “normal viewing distance” (whatever that is)......

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As far as I know, the normal viewing distance is normally considered to be 2x the diagonal of the print.

Ian C said:

<snip>

I speculate that the light-absorbing blackening of the inside of the barrel and cells of the EL Nikkor are superior to that of the Beslar. Other than the contrast, I see no meaningful differences between these two 8” x 10” prints when viewed with reading glasses. At a “normal viewing distance” (whatever that is) and adjusted for equal contrast, there is no discernable difference between these two prints.

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Thanks Ian,

Your results are interesting; I was wrong to suspect the OP's lens alone (unless something untoward has happened to it). The Opemus II enlarger (consumer-level condenser design) did overheat and I often had to contend with popping negs back then; more often with 120 than with 35mm. I had no heat filter either.

Of some of the large prints i made with an old triplet, a 14" square print from 120 film shows grain softening noticeably towards the corners. Smaller prints (10 x 8 and smaller) are sharper.

It sounds as though another factor is affecting the OP's prints; perhaps the neg stage or baseboard is out of alignment. I sit by my opinion that a 4- or 6-element enlarging lens is a good buy if the OP wants to make large prints in the future.

Cheers,
kevs