Does the quality of darkroom equipment matter?

I've worked on a few different enlargers over the years, but I've made the vast majority of my prints on only two: a Meopta Opemus 6 (years ago) and Beseler 23CIII-XL (since 2005). My condenser bulb burned out and I had to order a replacement. The cheap replacement burned out after a few minutes (never buying a cheap replacement bulb again), so I am currently waiting for a higher-quality replacement to arrive. Meanwhile, I had a chance to do a quick session using a Beseler 45MXT, and I found the difference in terms of ease of use and the overall comfort level huge.

Now, I need to point out that I am a disabled person, so my workflow preferences are very specific and, honestly, kind of weird. I found the Beseler 45MXT such a pleasure to use. It appears rock solid, and yet, it's kind of graceful in how it operates. I also loved the Saunders easel, the Peak grain focuser, the glass negative carrier, and the dedicated Beseler enlarger stand / table. The Rodenstock 105mm f/5.6 Rodagon was the icing on the cake. The larger space didn't hurt either, and neither did the brighter safe lights. All of those are, technically, much better than what I am currently using.

Did I make a better print? No! However, would I make better prints on better equipment in the long run? Maybe. I honestly don't know.

What do you guys think? Has your work improved with better darkroom / enlarging equipment?

Not quality, but certainly volume.
I miss the days when I had room for a dedicated darkroom.

Beter equipment, better set up makes darkroom work more enjoyable. In the end, print quality has much less to do with equipment used, more whether it is stable and aligned properly, then lens quality will have some effect, chemicals mixed correctly and maintained as required.

I conder the glass negative carrier indispensable for consistently making prints that are uniformly focused. One of the overlooked benefits of the glass carrier is that the mass of the glass plates and their heat capacity, which is many times that of the negative. Over the relatively short time span of the enlarging exposure, the glass will absorb heat received by the negative and help keep it from temporarily warping.

I’ve made good prints on all sorts of equipment from cheap to expensive. I own simple triplet enlarging lenses. I also have 6-element lenses such as EL Nikkor, Componon, Rodagon, Omicron EL, Fujinon EX, etc. I also have some APO Rodagons and one APO Nikkor (305/9 process lens). I made good prints with all of them.

I don’t see any meaningful difference in the results from my standard 6-element lenses compared to the prints I’ve made with the apochromats. The best prints are made from the best negatives using your experience to do everything correctly, including keeping everything properly adjusted. These things have the biggest influence on the results you get.

Better equipment, no matter what you're doing, can drastically reduce the trouble of accomplishing your task. That means you can focus more. That means you waste less time. But, when it comes to enlargers, almost all of them are pretty high quality. When the options are more or less equal, then it can become a matter of what's most comfortable to use.

I think print quality is to a large extent about attention to detail and the accumulation of marginal gains. Someone who pays attention to details will make a better print with the same equipment than someone who doesn’t; and they will make really good prints in a very humble darkroom. A lot of darkroom equipment is nice to have but you can make excellent prints without it.

That said, there are some aspects of the equipment that can really limit the outcome, such as a low quality enlarger lens. And it must be possible to set up the enlarger so that the negative and baseboard are parallel, as near as dammit.

After that, my priorities would jump to things that allow you to keep the darkroom clean wrt chemicals and dust: separate wet and dry benches, wipe-down surfaces, splash-backs, lots of tongs, cupboards to help keep the place free of dust-collecting clutter.

These days I am fortunate in having a simple but carefully planned, dedicated darkroom shed. I do not have a colour head, nor an f-stop timer (not even an electronic timer), nor a 4-blade easel, nor a deep darkroom sink, nor hot tap water, nor a dish heater, nor a paper safe. My enlarger is basic but decent, and most of my other equipment was bought second-hand from e**y. It’s pretty easy to achieve excellent prints with this setup. My main difficulty is producing excellent negatives first!

It's like a lot of things in life; some us need everything just so in order to be able to concentrate on the job in hand and some people are very happy to make do. I always annoy myself about how bloody fussy I am. I'm a bit of a 'princess and the pea' type.

We all have to find our own level but, most of the time, the equipment has less of an impact on the quality of the output that we'd like.

Depends what you mean by better. Just like cameras, too many automated electronic bells n whistles on an enlarger can just become complicated headaches once these need maintenance. But quality of manufacture, solidity, precision of focus, etc, all make a big difference. Get into actual commercial quality enlargers, which were originally very expensive, and were designed to be precisely tuned-up from time to time, and these can be a real joy to work with. No, Beseler never made anything like that.

The quality of lenses can also make a difference, more so between old ones and post-70's modern ones. Whether you need the finest Apo ones depends on what you're doing and your personal budget. But many folks get on the wrong track trying to solve with lenses more fundamental problems like lack of true film flatness in an insufficient carrier system, or due to an improperly aligned enlarger.

aparat said:

I also loved the Saunders easel, the Peak grain focuser, the glass negative carrier, and the dedicated Beseler enlarger stand / table. The Rodenstock 105mm f/5.6 Rodagon was the icing on the cake. The larger space didn't hurt either, and neither did the brighter safe lights. All of those are, technically, much better than what I am currently using.

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I've wanted to try a glass negative carrier for a long time. I can see a slight focus difference when I view a 6x7 or 6x9 negative across the frame using a grain focuser. The enlarger is properly aligned so I'm fairly certain I'm seeing a sag or other deformation in the negative, but the resulting prints show no visible problems with focus so I've not made the investment.

A glass carrier sounds like a good toy though so I still want one.

Better quality equipment can make a difference BUT there is a law of diminishing returns and, at some point, the weak link is going to be the creativity of the photographer.

It’s not unlike arguments about equipment in other endeavors. Audio comes to mind and with the search for the best gear where the “best” is measured with an oscilloscope not the ear.

Having a comfortable workflow make darkroom work more enjoyable.
Anything that requires a lot of 'work-around' to make work just adds to misery and frustration.
Having the right music playing helps, too!

warden said:

A glass carrier sounds like a good toy though so I still want one.

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It's a separate headache (4 more surfaces to get the dust off), but it's necessary for some film. I got Newton rings with the 6x9 one I had - made a nice pattern on the print - the back of the film was very glossy (don't recall what film it was).

Like most users above, to me good equipment makes it more enjoyable to work in the darkroom, but for me good equipment doesn't mean I need the most expensive gear that money can buy.
I certainly don't have the most expensive gear around!

I also don't have a 4-bladed easel (just some mediocre 2-bladed easels, hello uneven borders!), no sink or running water in my attic, but 2 large buckets with fresh water which I regularly dump and refill in the bathroom downstairs during a print session.
A short wash in the first bucket followed by a longer wash in the second bucket should be a sufficient enough wash for at least RC papers.
Fiber papers I process the same, but they get an extra wash in the bathtub afterwards.

I do try to improve my setup bit by bit continuously to make my scarce time in the darkroom as efficient as possible.
And for me that improves quality, since I've got less things to think about and I can do more prints in a session, resulting in a better final print.

I started out with my dad's old gear, an Opemus 5 with a Nikkor 50mm f/4 and glass negative carrier on a Philips timer.
Then I found a 50mm f/2.8 Rodagon for not too much money so I upgraded the lens. The Nikkor was good enough, but the Rodagon is visibly better and more convenient to focus with.

Also got some glassless 35mm carrier inserts to get rid of the dust marks and newton rings that kept popping up on my prints and I also replaced the tungsten bulb with a good quality LED bulb.
For that I bought a bunch of LED bulbs and measured the light spectrum of them, made numerous test prints on different print grades and finally settled on one of the cheapest ones being the best replacement.
The LED bulb reduces heat significantly (no popping negatives with the glassless carrier) and it even cuts the exposure times in half (the Opemus 5 has a fixed condenser for both 35mm and 6x6, wasting a lot of light when exposing 35mm negatives).
I did measure a tiny bit more falloff in the corners of the exposed area with the LED bulb compared to the tungsten bulb, but not enough for me to see the difference in any of my prints.
So, technically less quality with the LED bulb and glassless carrier, but still I am able to make better prints than before.

I also built my own darkroom timer with f-stop printing functionality, automated test strip timing, converting exposure time when altering print size, safelight control and whatnot.
Also made some custom cardboard easels with larger borders for my most used print sizes which would not be possible on my 2-bladed easels.
Oh, and I modified a food warmer tray by adding a controllable thermostat, for speeding up the development process of lith printing. (the biggest time saver, going from >30min dev times to 3-5 min dev times!)
Recent addition is a homemade laser alignment tool to make aligning the enlarger with the baseboard a lot easier.

So, while the better equipment would definitely be welcome, I'm still happy with what I have and with a bit of creativity it ends up giving me exactly what I need to make a proper print!

Don Heisz said:

It's a separate headache (4 more surfaces to get the dust off), but it's necessary for some film. I got Newton rings with the 6x9 one I had - made a nice pattern on the print - the back of the film was very glossy (don't recall what film it was).

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The bottom glass isn't that necessary, is it? Two less glass surfaces to worry about.

A bit like driving a car...

• some cars simple 'feel' better to drive,
• some cars handle the road (going around corners or over rough stretches of road) more comfortably, and
• some cars have more features to increase the driver and passenger comfort

Enlargers are analogous to cars

• some have a firm/positive/unambiguous feel to the adjustment
• some better hold a particular adjustment without shifting, like focus
• some provide easier adjustment of the size of the light field to illuminate different negative sizes
• some provide automatic focus adjustment to suit changes in enlargement size

Vast difference in using my beginner Bogen enlarger (which I purchased for myself at about age 14) and my Beseler 45V-XL which I purchased for myself about 30 years later.


The quality of enlargement was largely dependent upon the lens used, though...evenness of illumination across the field was better in the Beseler but I can't say I had complaint about the Bogen in that regard.

There is a distinction between having quality equipment and the proper equipment. You can get by and make excellent prints in the darkroom without necessarily having the "proper" equipment. Much can be improvised, from easels to trays to safelights and print washers. However, having a quality enlarger and lens does make a difference. The sturdiness of the enlarger chassis that will resist vibrations and changes in alignment. The ability to align the different planes in order to produce sharp prints. And a good quality lens for crisp, sharp images at large reproduction ratios.

Anon Ymous said:

The bottom glass isn't that necessary, is it? Two less glass surfaces to worry about.

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The glass carriers I had (have? I may still have them...) were glass on the bottom and on the top. They were Omega D holders.

My 35mm enlarger is a Focomat which has the condenser directly on the negative. No glass underneath.

If you have installed the best available technology in your darkroom, then you will find: The limiting factor in producing prints is the photographer himself.

Klaus_H said:

If you have installed the best available technology in your darkroom, then you will find: The limiting factor in producing prints is the photographer himself.

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The price difference between TOP gear and one that costs a fraction is huge. Capability of delivering high quality print is abut the same. Jobo processor will not deliver better results, even if it makes it easier (and often more cumbersome) to repeat and keep things consistent (if one pays enough attention what makes it so advantageous) but it will be a lot more expensive than a simple developing tank, of effectively same capabilities. Both requiring proper use to get good results.

Enlarger needs to be stable, aligned and not vibrate when your cell phones rings, have a good lens, not necessarily top end / the most boutique one.

In the end, final print is still a derivative of what took place from exposing the negative, to developing it, to focusing it, and processing. Darkroom is only the second to last step in what matters (final presentation being last).

The big step-up for me was switching from condenser to DIY LED lamp. That gave me some more capabilities which make printing easier and more enjoyable. I can:

• Change the brightness of the LEDs, leaving time alone and the lens set to its sharpest f-stop.
• Change grade by changing the green/blue ratio. No more swapping contrast filters.
• Forget about heat and warping and glass carriers with their problems.

To misquote the old Toyota ad, "Put your hands on a LED; you'll never let go."
Mark

Anon Y. - Yes, BOTH top and bottom glass are necessary if you expect film to be consistently flat and truly in focus clear across. That is simply FACT known by every serious lab worker, although compromises inevitably occur in both high-speed commercial workflows as well as in many amateur applications. Just depends on your personal standards.

But in general, I never could figure out why people would spend thousand of dollars for yet another camera lens they'll seldom use, or to get the latest n' greatest tweak of some camera model, or even some silly designer camera bag, but make terrible compromises when it comes to darkroom gear. You're only as good as your weakest link.

Yes.
But the differences will be more easy to see in the prints if they are things like easels and paper cutters and print handling equipment and mat cutters than if they are things like APO lenses vs. 6 element lenses or high end timers vs. cheap ones.
Negative holders and light sources are somewhere in between.
One of the things that using higher quality equipment does do is spoil you a bit - once you have worked with a Durst commercial grade enlarger, you really notice the difference if you then start printing with a Printmaker 35.

I still remember when I got my first Omega D5500 enlarger. It was to upgrade from a Minolta Mod III I got in 1975.
Since I had no 4x5 negatives, and only had the new Omega set up for the same negative sizes as the Minolta, It actually took a month or so before I started preferentially using the Omega. The prints from both were identical and the Minolta was easier to use, having known its quirks since 1975.

The materials and machining of vintage 70's commercial enlargers like Durst would be almost impossible to afford in these days of CNC anodized aluminum fabrication, nylon gearing, and 3d printing. My last acquisition was a an 8x10 Durst L184 complete with colorhead and specialized carriers, around $27,000 back when new. My cost : free. I put a month of weekends into refurbishing it into 100% functional quality and around 95% original cosmetic quality. Replaced the bellows and re-laminated the baseboard. Can do up to 30X40 inch prints with it in vertical orientation. Fun project (my 4th big Durst).

Maybe another way to answer the question, is that once one gets beyond medium format, nearly all the equipment available in the day was "pro" quality.

For example if you consider Schneider's 360mm enlarging lens for 8x10, the did not even offer 3 and 4 element 'student' lenses as they did in the 50mm range .