• Welcome to Photrio!
    Registration is fast and free. Join today to unlock search, see fewer ads, and access all forum features.
    Click here to sign up

Cold light source vs normal? Difference?

markd514

Member
Allowing Ads
Joined
Jan 19, 2014
Messages
101
Format
35mm
Diffuser vs condenser vs cold light. I am interested in cold light. I wonder if LED is out yet? What is the best?
 
I have a color enlarger that has a diffuser and dichroic filters. Diffusers produce lower contrast prints for black & white than a condenser. Condensers show dust while diffusers show less dust. Condensers have to be changed when to format and hence the enlarger lens is changed, not so with diffusers.
 
Not much more to add than Sirus Glass wrote.
When you start breaking down diffusion enlargers into LED (Heiland), cold cathode (Aristo), hot cathode (Omegalight), xenon (Beseler), incandescent (Elwood), and dichroic (all others) the differences are mostly functional or economical.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Post Exposuse by Ctein goes into a lot of detail of the specific differences between diffuser and condenser enlarger illumination.
A PDF is available for free from his website now, it's worth a read.
 
First, if someone wishes to confront this statement, please do so with a valid explanation.

But it is my understanding that a diffusion enlarger does NOT reduce resolution. This 'reduction' is inferred through the (slight) lowering of contrast; this lowering makes it a bit more difficult for the eye to differentiate between tones. - David Lyga
 
You may be correct, but why so confrontational this morning, David? That is a completely bizarre preface sentence:

"First, if someone wishes to confront this statement, please do so with a valid explanation."
 
Well I tried led and cfc in the warmest light for my home, and they are hideous and grotesque. I have a 20 year supply of incandescent bulbs...lol
 
bdial said:
Post Exposuse by Ctein goes into a lot of detail of the specific differences between diffuser and condenser enlarger illumination.
A PDF is available for free from his website now, it's worth a read.
Click to expand...

http://ctein.com/PostExposure2ndIllustrated.pdf

Page 57 ...

I think Mr Lyga is just asking for facts over speculation or myths.

I have two identical Beseler 4x5 chassis in my darkroom, one with the 45S "color" head and one with the standard condenser. I can make identical prints with either. The myth I find most interesting is that diffusion heads hide dust. Oh, puhleeze. The dust spots on my diffusion prints may be slightly lower in contrast, but they're just as sharp and require just as much spotting ...
 
I've recently switched back to a condenser after 17ish years with cold light heads and I couldn't be happier. Nice crisp prints, and the slightly paler negatives needed for this source are also perfect for scanning.

Back in the 90s I really bought into the whole Fred Picker "condensers bad" jibber jabber, which looking back now reminds me of Squealer in Animal Farm: "it has been scientifically proven, comrades, that condenser enlargers are wildly inferior to cold light heads and that fixer is heavier than water..." Four legs, good; two legs, bad.

So I bought the Zone VI cold light, and even with the compensating metronome it was a real challenge to get consistent exposures. The head would warm up and that thing would beep about five times per second, impossible to count. It drove me nuts. I spent a wad of cash on all that gear.

Now it's just the condenser head (a light bulb with a lens) and the Darkroom Automation f-stop timer. Light bulb goes on, light bulb goes off. Super simple. Love it long time.

The other advantage here is that there are no transformers, special circuits, boutique bulbs or any other gizmodgetry that will eventually fail and need to be replaced with great difficulty and expense, since it's no longer manufactured.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
ParkerSmithPhoto said:
I've recently switched back to a condenser after 17ish years with cold light heads and I couldn't be happier. Nice crisp prints, and the slightly paler negatives needed for this source are also perfect for scanning.

...
Click to expand...

You not the first, or last, to do that!
 
In this day and age, availability of replacement bulbs for any enlarger light source is an open question. Another advantage of cold light heads over condensers is that cold lights don't emit as much heat, so negatives are less likely to pop during exposure and lose focus over part of or the entire image. Note I said "as much" and "less likely". Run a cold light head long enough, with the same negative, and it too will emit heat enough to make the negative pop.

I recently got my hands on an Oriental VC-CLS cold light head. To me, it is a marvel. I'm getting better prints from it than I've ever gotten before, but that could also just be I'm making better negatives.
 
markd514 said:
Diffuser vs condenser vs cold light. I am interested in cold light. I wonder if LED is out yet? What is the best?
Click to expand...

hi markd514
it also matters what your negatives are suited for ...
cold light sometimes require a negative that has more meat on it. thin negatives
don't necessarily work and might be difficult to print. ( very short exposure times )
 
Diffused light, including cold light, tends to be far more popular because dust and fine scratches on the neg are less apparent. But back at one time there were so many articles on this debate that you could probably cover a football field with them. One quickly learns to properly develop their neg contrast for their own specific equipment. And in this day and age, VC papers are not only excellent, but dominant. So a lot of fuss over nothing, really. A condenser head can be turned into diffusion with a simple sheet of transluscent white plexiglas. When it comes to the specific type of head, you do need to be concerned with the reliability of the electronics and availability of replacement lamps etc. Various ordinary colorheads are wonderful for VC printing, and obviously allow you to experiment with color printing too.
 
Simple stupid is better. Keep my condenser! Thanks guys
now, should i keep my 2 enlargers? Beseler 45 mxt with dichro head and beseler 23cii condenser or just use the 45? I print both color and b and w 35mm and 120. Also have the dual dichro head for 23. Don't know what kind of 4x5 camera to get for compact backpacking. Thinking of selling the 23 for a Saunders lpl 670. I want the best of the best since I am going all in here
 
markd514 said:
Diffuser vs condenser vs cold light. I am interested in cold light. I wonder if LED is out yet? What is the best?
Click to expand...

In my opinion,the LED head from Heiland Electronics is the best and I'd stay away from cold lights but a good all-round head is a color diffuser.
 

What are you shooting now? Have you been at it very long?

Large format is delightful but requires an investment of time, money and energy of which people sometimes aren't aware.

As for the enlargers, those are all great units, but unless you have a ton of darkroom space I would stick with the 45MXT. The Dichro Head is not significantly different from a cold light head. Keep what you have and SHOOT!
 
I can't think of any kind of colorhead bulb that isn't readily available from a specialty bulb supplier; and they're usually going to have way
better prices than specialty photo houses. Ordinary opal bulbs for old condenser heads are another issue. These units can be converted to
more modern options if needed. I consider LED lighting to be very adolescent at this point in time. So if you go that way, make sure it's convenient to replace your entire light panel if it fails or some component does become obsolete, which is likely. Replacement cold lights take some forethought, and might need to be custom made well in advance of anticipated need.
 
One reason to choose diffusion over condenser is the ability to use contrast masks. These opaque masks (frosted mylar and pencil shading at the simplest) do not work with condenser enlargers. They are a very powerful tool.

I would stay away from buying cold light systems (florescent tubes) unless you have a light integrator and a ready supply of tubes. LED heads can do everything a cold light tube can, and more. However there aren't too many on the market, and building your own may be outside of most people's comfort zone.

I think the easiest diffusion solution is a color head or a VC head like the Ilford 500. Halogen bulbs, but the heat doesn't make it to the film. So you get the advantages of cold light diffusion and the ease of halogen bulbs.
 

I generally prefer the snap you get with a condenser.
 
Resolution is not affected by diffusion, and there are various ways to fine-tune contrast. The "look" can be a bit different. I think I'd personally go nuts using a condenser system, since I do frequently rely on masking and all the extra fuss that goes with it. But a condenser head can be converted back and forth between diffusion if that is what you prefer, so this is not necessarily a one-way street. If you plan to print color, it's obviously desirable to have a colorhead per se, which is a diffusion source.
 
Prints are almost indistinguishable if the neg is developed for the light source, i.e. 10% less for condenser. If you have to burn in, you are developing too long. This is NOT true is you use #2 on a condenser and #3 on a diffusion, same neg. They are quite different.

Burn in is easier with diffusion and that is the biggest advantage,

Cold light or diffusion color makes no difference. The original Aristo were very blue and did not work well with VC because there was not enough green. Later models were made with more balanced tubes.

You can use use Rosco blue and green light gels if you have no yellow magenta.
 
The primary reason I use the cold light is that I get negative popping with incandescent. If I went back I would probably have to use glass negative carriers. The lack of heat in the darkroom is another bonus but I do have to wait for the cold light to warm up, and I think my VC filters are not linear.
 

The sad problem is glass carrier (needed to prevent negative popping with condenser heads) can be a dust nightmare due to the focused light hitting the dust on six surfaces and rendering the particles in great detail in your prints. Diffuse light usually blurs out the dust on the top and bottom of the glass carrier. The dust trapped between the glass can still show in all its intimate detail.
 
For the same reason, glass can also isolate your emulsion from dust, if it is clean in the first place. There is really no substitute for working
clean and having a well-aligned enlarger. But dust can arise in the enlarger itself, esp from inside the bellows, and land on the neg; so going "glassless" is not a sure cure, and is more likely to result in an unsharp print, or a situation where you're tempted to stop down the enlarging lens too far, and thus accentuate any blemishes on the neg. Since spotting is one of the least appealing aspects of printmaking, I gave up on
the idea of condenser heads long ago, and I load my carriers in a true cleanroom.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register