De Vere 504 LED conversion

[Neil Grant]

Intrepid De Vere 504 Enlarger Converter

Convert any classic De Vere 504 Enlarger head to use modern LED technology. Give your old enlarger a truly new lease of life. The LED lights are perfectly calibrated for printing and everything is controlled by the timer/control unit.

intrepidcamera.co.uk

anyone tried this yet? Looks interesting and a lot cheaper than an Ilford multigrade system or a DeV colour head. I wonder if it would be bright enough for smaller formats though.

 

[Mick Fagan]

That does look interesting, mine so far is still running very well.

As for the smaller formats, I currently have the 4x5 mixer box in and have left it in forever. Once with an extreme 35mm enlargement I put the medium format mixing box in, then immediately put the larger mixing box in, that is about it from around 25 years of usage.

Does the timer have a footswitch? I use my footswitch for almost everything, I couldn't exist without a footswitch.

I wonder how light the colour head movement will be without all of that weight?

 

[koraks]

anyone tried this yet?

Not personally, but there are test reports online. It'll work OK for B&W, not so well for color. Printing times for VC warmtone paper on the lower contrast grades may be a bit long, but in the higher grades they'll likely be fine/fast enough.

I wonder how light the colour head movement will be without all of that weight?

It has a weight added to it for this reason.
No footswitch I think.

 

[Lachlan Young]

It's easily a stop faster than an MG500 with the 4x5 mixing box. Contrast ranges seem very close, if not slightly advantageous to the Intrepid. Not sure where the claims about it being slow with warmtone papers are coming from (unless from generic commentary about LED heads), it makes working with Fomatone quite a lot faster.

It comes with a slab of steel to act as a counterweight over and above the adapter plate. The only major criticism I'd make is that the cable could be a bit longer, and that an additive exposure mode would be handy (i.e. RGB sequentially). There are a few quirks to the controller (like switching between safelight and white light focus mode), but overall, it's exceptionally good, and in many ways like a combination of the good points of VC and cold cathode heads with less of the irritations. Installation is very easy. It's rather more brutalist in construction than the Heiland, and the interface is more ruthlessly straightforward (i.e. no hand holding for the hobbyist operator).

I'd like to hope there might be enough demand for an 8x10 version.

 

[koraks]

Not sure where the claims about it being slow with warmtone papers are coming from (unless from generic commentary about LED heads), it makes working with Fomatone quite a lot faster.

Green LEDs are fairly inefficient. The types used here (WS2812 type addressable LEDs) are pretty low-powered to begin with. I've built many LED heads and printed loads with them for several years now, color and B&W. It's been ages since I printed with the 500 head and maybe that was slower, still. If you feel it's fast enough, that's good. Maybe it really is faster than the 500, like I said, it's a long time ago.

Btw, 'fast' is relative; I've come to understand that many people will consider either the toe of the paper curve or a mid (ca. 18%) grey as the reference. I never did this; what is meaningful to me, personally, is the time it takes to produce a print with a full tonal scale. If you print at lower grades, this means you're printing through lots more density. Hence, times will be inherently longer to reach the same shadow density as when printing through the shadow areas on a thin negative with a higher grade. So it depends also a bit on what your frame of reference and your printing preferences are. Crucial considerations are all too often kept implicit when we discuss these things. Mind you, I'm not blaming anyone, merely observing.

The worst case scenario is using a roughly 4x5" light source to print through a small format (35mm or smaller) negative onto warmtone paper (like Fomatone). Since this is something I've frequently done, I've kept this into account in building my own LED heads and thus, they tend to be a little (lots) more beefy than e.g. the Intrepid or Heiland systems, especially in the green channel. But it's a tradeoff between color and B&W; a good color LED head poses a few different requirements than B&W does and the optimization is also different. The Intrepid system works well enough for B&W, but is not very suitable for color work; it's evidenced in e.g. the Naked Photographer review of the system, which highlights the problem (but doesn't succeed in understanding the main cause).

 

[Lachlan Young]

Green LEDs are fairly inefficient. The types used here (WS2812 type addressable LEDs) are pretty low-powered to begin with. I've built many LED heads and printed loads with them for several years now, color and B&W. It's been ages since I printed with the 500 head and maybe that was slower, still. If you feel it's fast enough, that's good. Maybe it really is faster than the 500, like I said, it's a long time ago.

Btw, 'fast' is relative; I've come to understand that many people will consider either the toe of the paper curve or a mid (ca. 18%) grey as the reference. I never did this; what is meaningful to me, personally, is the time it takes to produce a print with a full tonal scale. If you print at lower grades, this means you're printing through lots more density. Hence, times will be inherently longer to reach the same shadow density as when printing through the shadow areas on a thin negative with a higher grade. So it depends also a bit on what your frame of reference and your printing preferences are. Crucial considerations are all too often kept implicit when we discuss these things. Mind you, I'm not blaming anyone, merely observing.

The worst case scenario is using a roughly 4x5" light source to print through a small format (35mm or smaller) negative onto warmtone paper (like Fomatone). Since this is something I've frequently done, I've kept this into account in building my own LED heads and thus, they tend to be a little (lots) more beefy than e.g. the Intrepid or Heiland systems, especially in the green channel. But it's a tradeoff between color and B&W; a good color LED head poses a few different requirements than B&W does and the optimization is also different. The Intrepid system works well enough for B&W, but is not very suitable for color work; it's evidenced in e.g. the Naked Photographer review of the system, which highlights the problem (but doesn't succeed in understanding the main cause).

It's about level with the 500 running through the 35mm mixing box - and the 500 is very fast compared to many MG heads, especially VCCE ones. The fact it delivers far better than decent performance for B&W is remarkable - and my comment about finding a way to get it to deliver individually timed RGB sequential exposures would be a pragmatic way to resolve the issues with the green LED not quite being in the optimal bandwidth for colour and/ or the PWM controller not having a high enough bit-depth. There's also the option of using separation filters with the white-light mode (if people could print colour/ make separations with 1950s cold cathodes...) - but you can see why the attempt was made to deliver an integrated single-exposure CMY control interface, given how much of a nuisance sequential exposures are perceived to be.

The other thing I'd note is that the Heiland device doesn't try to deliver a CMY interface translation, but rather purely RGB on the colour controller. It may have a higher bit depth PWM within the system, but the colour controller is an extra for what is largely a B&W head intended for use with the splitgrade system.

One final note, I suspect the sensor in the Ilford EM-10 has peak sensitivity somewhere outside the peaks of the LED outputs as it seems to give anomalous results with this particular head.

 

[koraks]

finding a way to get it to deliver individually timed RGB sequential exposures would be a pragmatic way to resolve the issues with the green LED not quite being in the optimal bandwidth for colour and/ or the PWM controller not having a high enough bit-depth

Yes, it would help for the bit depth. If no burning/dodging are intended, it's a viable solution given that the time can be set accurately enough. I don't see how additive exposures would help with the bandwidth issue since it doesn't change anything about the wavelength the LEDs emit. But this is a more minor issue anyway. Neither of these problems are relevant for B&W and I wouldn't worry about them in the least for VC printing.

the Heiland device doesn't try to deliver a CMY interface translation, but rather purely RGB on the colour controller.

Yeah. It's mostly a matter of taste. It works either way IMO. You use whatever you've got and it's easy enough to get used to the alternative in case you need to switch.

I suspect the sensor in the Ilford EM-10 has peak sensitivity somewhere outside the peaks of the LED outputs as it seems to give anomalous results with this particular head.

I noticed something similar with LiCi ColorStar analyzers. When you feed them a PWM-ed light source, it makes the output erratic and just plain weird. The signal amplification is just a linear opamp amplifier, not an integrating one. I had an EM-10 here for repairs not too long ago, but I didn't analyze the circuit (the problem was related to a connector). I suspect it works much the same and thus also goes haywire due to the PWM-ed LEDs.

Given the price point and the fact that the only realistic competing product is something like 5x as expensive, the Intrepid system looks perfectly fine to me for B&W work. For color...I remain highly skeptical, even with improvements to the controller.

 

[Mick Fagan]

Koraks, thanks for the information regarding added weight.

Lachlan Young, interesting about the short(ish) lead for an enlarger that can have the head around 2 metres from the floor and the baseboard around 150mm from the floor. A footswitch is almost a must with those extreme enlargements; well, it certainly makes life tremendously easier. I just had another look at the link, they show the small desktop enlarger, not the freestanding unit with the drop table.

Presumably there are quite a few of these desktop units in the UK, whereas in Australia they are reasonably rare, as almost everyone purchasing a DeVere enlarger was a professional photo lab and if you were going to spend heaps of money on a commercial tool, then shelling out a bit more money, gave you a heaps more capable enlarger.

 

[Lachlan Young]

Koraks, thanks for the information regarding added weight.

Lachlan Young, interesting about the short(ish) lead for an enlarger that can have the head around 2 metres from the floor and the baseboard around 150mm from the floor. A footswitch is almost a must with those extreme enlargements; well, it certainly makes life tremendously easier. I just had another look at the link, they show the small desktop enlarger, not the freestanding unit with the drop table.

Presumably there are quite a few of these desktop units in the UK, whereas in Australia they are reasonably rare, as almost everyone purchasing a DeVere enlarger was a professional photo lab and if you were going to spend heaps of money on a commercial tool, then shelling out a bit more money, gave you a heaps more capable enlarger.

I reckon that while the overwhelming majority of 5108s were wall or floor models, the distribution between bench, wall and floor 504s was rather different - and that right now, demand for bench 504s is very high, but floor 504s are relatively easier to get hold of. I could probably find out an answer to what the relative demand was in the past, but a lot of the 504 market was probably not that different to the Durst L1200 market - and that many labs seem to have jumped up to the 5108 if they went for floor standing. Of course a huge amount depended on the work being handled and demand for things like enlarged contact sheets.

With that said, if you have the platform for the 504 transformer & timer on your 504DVF, the control box for the Intrepid will sit quite happily there with the head at the top of the column - and if you ask Intrepid, you can get an extension for the cable.

es, it would help for the bit depth. If no burning/dodging are intended, it's a viable solution given that the time can be set accurately enough.

There are various ways around dodge/burn with sequential exposures, none of them as complicated as some want to make them appear.

I strongly suspect that both the Intrepid and the Heiland use very similar RGB LED panels (I really doubt either are getting them custom made - and the housing/ heatsinks on some of the Heilands are very clearly where the money is going) - with the Intrepid control probably being an Arduino or similar (no idea about the Heiland, but it is a fair few years older than the Intrepid).

 

[koraks]

I strongly suspect that both the Intrepid and the Heiland use very similar RGB LED panels

no way

probably being an Arduino or similar

exceedingly unlikely in the production version. who knows what anyone does during prototyping.

 

[albada]

exceedingly unlikely in the production version. who knows what anyone does during prototyping.

Intrepid uses an Arduino. Here's a screen-grab from a review on Youtube:

The Arduino is at the upper left.
Here's the link to the review:

 

[koraks]

Good grief, you're right. Sigh....

 

[Carnie Bob]

On the topic of DeVere enlarger adaptions , I just had Ian Leake provide me one of his amazing timers with cables to hook up to my 11 x 14 Devere transformer, I have two Devere Enlargers
and in both cases the timers were becoming wonky, I. love the adaptation. An UV timer drives my UV exposure unit and now Ian is making straight timers for Enlarging work.