Cold Light Head

[RolleiCO]

Well, my Aristo D2 cold light head arrived today with the bulb broken. The seller is being great and trying to find a replacement, but if anyone can direct me to a source, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.


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[Ken Nadvornick]

Well, my Aristo D2 cold light head arrived today with the bulb broken. The seller is being great and trying to find a replacement, but if anyone can direct me to a source, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Aristo D2-HI Replacement Lamp

(third item down on the page)

This is the high-intensity (better for 35mm negatives and/or big enlargements) and V54 color (better for Ilford variable contrast filter use) replacement grid lamp.

Ken

 

[RolleiCO]

Thanks, Ken!


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[DREW WILEY]

I can make identical looking prints with a cold light, an additive colorhead, or an ordinary subtractive colorhead. I can do it all at once with
mixed light, or via split printing through deep blue or green filtration as needed. In fact, to save time and developer activity during actual printing sessions, I often have all three types of enlarger set up with different negatives in advance, so I don't have to waste time cleaning
film and neg holders during the session itself. Once you're comfortable with your gear, it all becomes fairly intuitive, and a lot of these gear
debates about paper contrast get downright silly after a certain point, provided your enlarging gear in general is of decent quality.

 

[Ronald Moravec]

Agreed, in fact his company Zone VI sold it's own cold light enlarger.

If you have to resort to diffusion, the negative has too much contrast. He is a salesman.

 

[Paul Howell]

If you have to resort to diffusion, the negative has too much contrast. He is a salesman.

Or if you resort to condenser your negatives have too little contrast.

In general I prefer condenser myself, but for some negatives a diffusion enlarger work for me as well. I have an old Federal diffusion enlarger with a 2 element lens, uses waterhouse stops, for some subjects like soft portraits gives a look that is really very different from a condenser.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Fred Picker certainly did sound like an old time snake oil salesman at times; but I've been pretty happy with the few gadgets I did buy from
Zone VI, and their Brilliant Bromide graded paper was indeed brilliant. His cold lights were, unfortunately, distinctly undersized for the recommended format. Aristo did a much better job in that category.

 

[Mainecoonmaniac]

I agree with you with somethings about Fred Picker

Fred Picker certainly did sound like an old time snake oil salesman at times; but I've been pretty happy with the few gadgets I did buy from
Zone VI, and their Brilliant Bromide graded paper was indeed brilliant. His cold lights were, unfortunately, distinctly undersized for the recommended format. Aristo did a much better job in that category.

He was definitely dogmatic about his products. He sold the baffle modification to you light meter that would increase accuracy. Prints of his that show how a fine print should look like. A dry down enlarger timer. And the compensating timer that had a sensor for your print developer. All snake oil?

 

[DREW WILEY]

There are all kinds of pros and cons to ideas like his light meter modification. You gotta remember he standardized all this gear to what HE
considered "typical" film, namely Tri-X, which I never shoot. I still use his developer temp timer and cold light timer. Otherwise, I was hardly overwhelmed by his own work. His Zone VI tripods were just cheapo survey tripods that froze up and eventually fell apart in any serious weather. I got suckered into those once, repaired it and gave it to an amateur astronomer, and then bought the real deal - Ries. His view cameras and enlargers were just so-so. Not really pro gear at all. But he was a "barker" in the old county fair sense, selling his wares with blatant enthusiasm, whether worthy or not. Yet I wish he was still around. Calumet dropped the ball after they purchased Zone VI.

 

[RolleiCO]

I just got the price for a replacement V54 replacement bulb - $170.00 plus shipping. I am, to say the least, stunned. My condensers are not so bad after all. Wow.


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[Luis-F-S]

Unfortunately, the replacement bulbs are not cheap but at least they are available. I've yet to burn one out in use, but they are somewhat fragile in shipping. Probably cheaper to buy another head on the auction site.

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

I just got the price for a replacement V54 replacement bulb - $170.00 plus shipping. I am, to say the least, stunned. My condensers are not so bad after all. Wow.

You may not be familiar with the history involved. All of the currently available Aristo replacement lamp grids were completely discontinued many years back. Aristo itself had been purchased by a different company, which had itself been purchased by another. The entire Aristo line went extinct in the process.

One of the members here on APUG needed a new set of tubes for their variable contrast Aristo head. So that person took it upon himself to work with representatives at LCD Lighting (who ended up with the remnants of Aristo) to convince them to reengineer and reintroduce a series of brand new replacement lamps using currently available raw materials. This process took almost two full years of continuous effort to become a reality.

The replacement grid lamps for most Aristo heads are now once again available, but not as regularly stocked items. They are individually handmade to order. (Although it's possible the D2-HI model may be made in small batches as it's the most commonly requested.)

This is not an inexpensive process. LCD must recover not only manufacturing costs, but significant R&D costs as well. I myself have purchased a replacement set of grids for my own Aristo VCL4500 variable contrast head. The pair (one blue, one green) came to over $500 at the time. Before Aristo was bought out I also purchased my own D2-HI lamp for use in a Zone VI head. That cost over $100, as I recall.

None of this is inexpensive or cheap. And I understand price point sensitivity, having been there myself. But the key take-away is that pricey is always preferable to extinct. Pricey can be mitigated. Extinct can't.

We are all very lucky in these times to still have access to these ancient replacement parts. It's a near miracle that they are still available at all.

If a cold light head is important to you, you may have to consider giving up something else to get one. If it helps, consider it a one-off purchase and figure out just how little that $170 will really be if divided up by the number of days left in your photographic life...

Best of luck in your decision.



Ken

 

[RolleiCO]

Ken:

Thank you for the background information. I only returned to shooting film about a year ago and a lot has happened over the intervening years. Kudos to the APUG member who took it upon him/herself to keep these in production. I certainly understand the cost of low-run items (my son's college text books come to mind), I was just caught off guard when I heard the price.


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[MattKing]

To give you a point of reference, here is a listing for a currently manufactured variable contrast head for a 4x5 enlarger: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/46234-REG/Omega_210046_LPL_VCCE_Variable_Contrast.html

 

[DREW WILEY]

Ho hum. Doesn't do anything I can't do just as easily with any number of free Omega colorheads. But if someone just has to have a bunch
or redundant bells n' whistles to merely to print VC paper, so be it.

 

[john_s]

Following Ken's posts a couple of years ago, I also bought a pair of VCL4500 tubes, which including shipping to Australia in spectacularly oversized packaging cost A LOT. However, I'm grateful to have been able to acquire them. The alternative would have been much worse. This old dog would have had to learn some new tricks, not to mention shell out more $. Although on this latter point, I would have bought a second hand colour head which might have been cheaper in the end. Anyway, I like my cold light heads, having used them for 40 years.

Incidentally, going back to the controversy about which sort of light is better, I will never forget how my prints improved when I moved from condenser to cold light. This in the days of graded papers. Looking back, and now with the knowledge that following manufacturers' development recommendations is unlikely to produce the optimum negative, I realise that my overcontrasty negs benefited from the diffuse light source and had I thought about it, improving my negs would have been a good alternative. Since cold light, I have rarely needed to spot a print though. I have no experience of colour heads.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Color heads are diffused, so would have the same effect. And most people with condenser heads tend to add diffusion to them too. Maybe
there is that rare care of someone wanting extremely crisp obvious grain. But the same thing can be done with high resolution lenses, without
the headache of making dust and scratches on the neg as blatantly apparent. My only condenser head has been sitting in a box for the last
twenty years, and will sit there, way in the back of a loft, till the day I die and somebody hauls it off to the dump. They're a niche technique
at this point in history. I don't know any pro lab that uses them.

 

[RolleiCO]

Well, I used my new Aristo head for the first time yesterday on the Omega D2V. The head I purchased is a very late model with a late generation lamp. I was very surprised at the intensity of the light. With the condenser head, I was usually exposing at f16 and in the 20 - 40 second range. With the Aristo (using the same negatives) I was exposing at f22 or f32 for 8 - 12 seconds. I was expecting the cold light to be the same, if not dimmer, than the incandescent lamp in the condenser head. My technique is getting better, but dodging with such a short exposure time is more challenging for me to control. I do like the results after one session, though.

Has anyone done anything to reduce the intensity of the cold light head allowing slightly longer exposure times? Maybe a thicker diffusion disc?


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[Ken Nadvornick]

Yes.

With a V54 high-intensity D2-HI lamp I routinely used neutral density polyester filters to cut down the light intensity. I purchased these inexpensively from a theatrical lighting supply store in 1, 2, and 3-stop density sheets, then cut circles from those to lay across the top of the diffusion disk (inside the lamp house).

Several published sources (including Ctein) have indicated that testing shows the sharpest enlarging lens apertures to usually be around one or two stops down from wide open. My own visual observations using a high-power grain magnifier seems to confirm this.

Since my preferred enlarging sizes range from only 2x to 5x, I added sufficient ND sheets to bring down exposure times to approximately 30 seconds or so, within that magnification range, at or near those preferred lens apertures. This worked very well for me at the time.

Ken

 

[NedL]

That's a good idea Ken. My zone VI cold light is also very bright and I usually end up stopping down the lens for the modest sized prints I make.

 

[RolleiCO]

Thanks, Ken. I just ordered 2 and 3 stop gel filters. Appreciate the solution.


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[Luis-F-S]

Has anyone done anything to reduce the intensity of the cold light head allowing slightly longer exposure times? Maybe a thicker diffusion disc?

If you can find a used Aristo D750 dimmer would also do the trick. They show up occasionally n are great!

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

I have one of the unicorns of enlarging - an Oriental VC-CLS cold light head. It won't let you start exposing until the head has warmed up sufficiently. You can focus and compose, but not print. It is a two-tube system, with one green and one blue. It's a 1980s system, so it has its limitations especially with the interface. I love the prints it makes - I can tell a difference between it and my old dichro head I had been using. The downside is you don't have quite as much range of contrast with it - it really bottoms out around a Grade 0, and it tops out around a Grade 4 - 4.5. I suspect this is due to the vintage of the design. My other pet peeve is there is no white light option for focusing. THAT would be great, as blue and green are harder to see when trying to focus on a yellow easel.

 

[paul ron]

I print with mine without the stabilizing unit.

Mine came with a photodiode installed, so I measured this with an analog ohmmeter, through a small current limiting resistor. It also has a built in heater, so that over time the entire unit heats up.

What I found is that it takes about 20 seconds for the fluorescent bulb to heat up and reach peak intensity. After that there is a fairly long period of time with quite stable light output. Then after a few minutes it starts to change more quickly. After the head has been plugged in and in use for a while, it takes less and less time to reach that initial peak... eventually getting there in 5 or 10 seconds. But the important part is that the level of that peak is itself very stable.

Originally I was planning to hook up a permanent ohmmeter so that I could always begin exposures when the light is at the same level. I know there is at least one other person here at APUG who uses that approach. But I have not found that to be necessary, and I can make very repeatable prints, even weeks apart.

Before every exposure, I let the lamp warm up for 30 seconds. This is at least 10 seconds into the "stable" region. If I've been working for a while, I'll sometimes cut that back to 20 seconds, which should still leave a 10 second "safety factor". I use a dodging card and a metronome to make my exposures instead of a timer.... and now that "warm-up time" is part of my routine and I use it to think about what I'm doing, how I will dodge or burn, etc...

So, yes, it can, but if you want repeatable prints you'll need to account for that warm-up period in some way.

Edit: I see the "one other person" responded before I typed this
Edit2: Mainecoonmaniac is right, and my cold light is very blue. I mostly use split grade printing with a blue 47b and a green filter. There were later bulbs designed to work with VC filters but I don't have one of those.

+1
never used a stabilizer. my unit has a heater plus ii turn it on for a few minutes at the begining of my print session.

i also use an ohmmeter to monitor the light using the built in photodiode. it doesn't take much to be consistant n i noticed once i get busy, the light output doesnt vary between focusing n print.