Enlarger recommendations

That list is just the tip of the iceberg. Some of the listed enlargers had multiple iterations, while limited or custom models aren't even listed. And then if you add in accessories, the entire thing would probably be a hundred pages long.

Milpool said:

That’s what I would be afraid of. After-sale support/service could be a nightmare.

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With both De Vere and Kienzle, you would need to do something truly astonishingly destructive to require electrical or mechanical components more complicated than can be acquired from somewhere like RS or McMaster-Carr - neither are generally using anything truly unique if you avoid closed loop or excessively computerised heads. Kienzle are essentially more robustly made Dursts - similar patterns of design, but where Durst used die castings, Kienzle largely use a lot of welded steel of decently solid section. De Vere 504's etc were (are) largely made from sand/ investment castings that are precision machined - some of their durability (and alignments that lock down tightly) probably related to their Royal Navy contract requirements. De Vere also made machines that made Durst's 10x10's look cheap - for similar markets as some of the Saltzman monsters (which, let's be frank about it, largely came into popular view because their institutional owners divested them into the hands of pro/ custom labs because they'd got their hands on the latest and greatest 10x10"+ machines from various highly specialist small companies, essentially all of whom turned up their toes sometime in the 1990s)

Ian Grant said:

Pavelle's research team developed and Patented the first Subtractive Dichroic filter system for colour heads. Keith Aston's patent was filed in 1965 (& granted) in the UK, US, & Germany.

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As I understand it, most of the bigger/ more expensive Durst (after they swallowed Pavelle) dichroic heads carried on being made in the UK for quite a long time - there's perhaps a small contrast difference between some of the Durst and De Vere dichroics, such that higher capacity professional colour labs often had both as swapping enlarger was faster than any other means of contrast control.

DREW WILEY said:

Durst excelled Devere in terms of amenities - precision carriers, more advanced colorheads, and so forth.

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Not really. De Vere made factory pin reg enlargers (on the Kodak pin system, which I would argue was a smarter choice, given that it was much more of a cross-discipline industry standard (vs being reliant on a craft machinist's products) when De Vere never had the scale of Durst's much more vertically integrated manufacturing) - it's also incredibly easy to fit other carriers to De Vere enlargers, the neg stage interface is simple and flat - and if necessary, you can change out the head lifting pins for ones of different length. There were (are?) several 3rd parties who offered carriers.

And as for advanced ultra high power colour heads etc, look up the De Vere Vulcan et al. There were even more high end manufacturers that make almost all the bigger Dursts look pretty cheap - HK was one example of a small company who made very specialist machines with high power computerised heads - with the option of stretching neg carriers for everything from 135 to 8x10 - all milled from solid aluminium billet (and they're adaptable to the 5108 with a little effort). An awful lot of the HK's seem to have been scrapped because they were massive - the vertical ones have a 10ft column from recall, and at full extension the head needs a fair bit of clearance beyond that.

From what I understand, the abortive De Vere/ ZBE adventure (closed loop, power autofocus etc) was really aimed at pro-labs in the period immediately before the Chromira and the Lambda appeared (i.e. more rapid production for less skill needed).

The Kodak pin system was primitive, and goes clear back to the days of wash-off relief printing. Durst at least had the sense to use micro-pins. But I converted even my precision Durst carriers to the Condit system anyway, which was the best. Unfortunately, when Warren Condit retired, he sold the rights to Durst-Pro USA (not Durst per se), that is, Jens, who was a very skilled machinist in his own right, but a devious businessman, now deceased.

Carlwen once offered third-party carriers, especially fluid carriers for oil immersion; otherwise, not all that great. Condit offered popular adapters for their pin system, relative to dye transfer printing. I've made some of my own
carriers.

In terms of electronic controls, I prefer as little as possible. Yeah, my unique 8x10 additive head necessarily does involve a lot of that nonsense, including ZBE feedback monitoring. But I rewired my Durst colorheads and went straight line voltage. I have zero use for autofocus anything. I know where there's a clean autofocus Durst for sale right now, 75K firm. But the most complex and expensive Dursts in terms of fanciness were the ones most cussed by their operators, including that one. ZBE had all kinds of problems with their own colorhead design. Hot ultra-bright light sources were required back in Cibachrome days, not anymore.

Putting other brand or DIY heads atop Durst columns is quite easy. I've have a 12X12 cold light atop one 138 chassis.

Considerable mass is an advantage in horizontal enlargers moving on rails. I had a lab friend who used a big horizontal DeVere for his mural-sized prints, equipped with an Apo Nikkor lens. Vertical enlargers are best when firmly anchored top and bottom.

Here are some Durst 'toys' for perusal.

Under a different earlier business name, Jens imported from Italy and sold off nearly all the remaining new commercial Durst enlargers, a considerable number of them at full price, around 50 units or so of 5x7 138's; I don't know how many bigger 8X10 rigs. Then he started up again in Oregon, using what new components were still available, manufacturing himself those that were not, and by buying up odds and ends as they became available, and refurbishing them. He really knew his stuff and did excellent work, and shipped many more big Durst enlargers, and hybrid enlargers of his own design, all over the world.

I spent an entire day with him at his facility. He bought a crate of my leftovers - including a 2000W colorhead, and a set of mint condensers, and as down payment gave me a brand new registration punch. But I never did receive either the matching pin glass or the cash he promised for the rest. That kind of practice turned out to be typical of him when it came to individuals, and cumulatively ruined his reputation. I wonder what happened to all the leftovers when he passed. What a shame! End of an era.

With commercial labs or Govt institutions, Jens made most of his money on mandatory service contracts, including travel expenses, of course. Ironically, some of the serious gear I received for free when a particular lab retired, came from him to begin with. So I can't complain. Others were not so lucky.

DREW WILEY said:

Depends. 5X7 Dursts were more like $15,000 US new unless really souped up.

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It came to them with all the paperwork, including the original invoice.
But it is pretty well equipped.

Ouch! That kind of money brought a fully equipped bigger L184 with colorhead here; but like I already hinted, sometimes there were strings attached. Back in the days when the labs were thriving, dropping hundreds of thousands or even million of dollars at a time on new equipment was commonplace. They might buy a dozen pro enlargers at a pop - or throw out a dozen at a time once superseded by newer technology. Hopefully the enlargers I've refurbished will get used for many decades more by someone else, and not share the same fate.

MARTIE said:

Here are some Durst 'toys' for perusal.

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As I recall, at the time of that publication he was not offering the L1840. Probably because the L184, being all mechanical, was easier to refurbish. Mabye Drew knows more.

Receipts from when my enlarger was new (1995 PRICES):

L1840 (LARANO AM) $27,875
2000W HEAD $19,200
300MM RODAGON $1,200
MIXING BOXES $1,690 X 4 = $6,760
DESKMES REMOTE $575

TOTAL 1995 = $55,610

Ice-Racer, that's was the later generation of the L with the supplementary column covers, and the later 2000W head. A nice setup, for sure, but not my idea of a favorite model to renovate. The simpler previous generation makes more sense in that case. Mine has motorized head height control, and also motorized focus control, but only manual baseboard adjustment. Otherwise, I equipped it with a 30X40 inch easel replete with adjustable masking blades, plus a quick conversion setup for alternate copystand use. And post-Cibachrome, I no longer need a 2000W head.

Durst's last rendition of a 2000W head was never marketed to the public. It was additive rather than subtractive, but was almost a nuclear meltdown situation when it came to filter maintenance - it ran way too hot, just like their early 2000W CLS300 head did.

Durst's most expensive routine enlarger was their horizontal-only 8x10 rig. The big problem with it was that all the carriers etc were unique to it, and not interchangeable with their other enlargers. Jens did sell a few of those, new at least. The packages probably exceeded 100K, plus his brutal setup and maintenance contract fees.

DREW WILEY said:

The Kodak pin system was primitive

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I think you know perfectly well that it wasn't. The Kodak pin system was the industry standard across great swathes of the printing world until digital - to the point that essentially every high quality image you saw in reproduction relied on them. The critical components were built to much tighter tolerances than Condit seemed to manage (not a surprise if you're mass manufacturing the things, rather than working at Bob Pace's keen neighbourhood machinist grade) - which is kind of essential if you want industry standard status - having to match pins to punch is not a signal of very tight manufacturing tolerances.

The only reason for Condit (and Durst's MIVALO) using small pins was to save a little time when working on sheet format transparencies, rather than taping on a leader strip - and when it comes to enlargements to matrix or gravure positive or final assembly of whatever you'd separated/ masked etc, it's all Kodak pins, all the way...

DREW WILEY said:

But I rewired my Durst colorheads and went straight line voltage

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Most of the regular De Vere dichroics aren't complex at all - the only part that might confuse a few is the 1200w stabiliser (which I think @koraks has written about repairing) - and even then, it's simple and pretty tough. It's also important to understand that Durst Pavelle (who did most of the design/ manufacture of the big Durst dichroics) and De Vere were not far apart geographically, they'll have been well aware what the other was up to. It's probably why ELC and ELH became very standard bulb choices.

DREW WILEY said:

Putting other brand or DIY heads atop Durst columns is quite easy

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If you modify it to take a flat plate. The ability to swing the head for wall projection is about the one area that the bigger Dursts have a slight usefulness edge in some respects over the De Vere, but you pay a price in absolute precision and alignment. I know this because I've routinely BTDT.

DREW WILEY said:

Vertical enlargers are best when firmly anchored top and bottom

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I'd hope that was obvious - the De Vere wall mounts/ tie downs are simple, chunky and universal across the 504 and up - and bolt directly to the core structure of the enlarger (BSF fitting, maddeningly). The Dursts aren't as simple, and it's the usual adaptability/ precision trade-off.

And one final note, any RGB additive heads you may have seen for mapping/ aerial usage were likely for multi-spectral composites rather than anything else.

Yes, the Kodak pin system was primitive. The dominant graphics brand here was Olec-Stoesser - various custom mixes of oval and round pins as specifically requested. Same with Ternes-Burton. But for ordinary film it was Condit. Taping a leader - something I have done countless times myself, is not as precise for direct enlarging purposes - it introduces even more expansion/contraction variables

It isn't just about time saving. Over time, with repeat print orders potentially years apart, you might need to remove old failing tape, clean the residue, retape, maybe re-punch too. If the film original was on dimensionally unstable acetate base, or acetate tape was involved, expect a big headache. It's not like a print-shop run with a concise project schedule.

And for best results, every component of a pin-registered system aligns best if ordered at the same time. That was especially important as machining advanced over the decades. Later Condit was far better made than the early stuff,
but people still dropped early pin glasses, and needed replacements. Even the diameter of the micropins changed a little. Get into precision duplicates using multiple registration steps, and you lose the wiggle room of "unsharp" mask or dye transfer dye-bleeding, with darn little room for error - especially on exceptionally crisp repro media like Cibachrome or Fujiflex Supergloss.

On another note, I have only seen the internal colorhead components, including filter banks, as well as the housings and feedback mechanism, of the Durst additive system. The enlargers themselves were held in a dedicated high-security NSA facility where no form of digital imaging was allowed whatsoever. The point was to have high detail 9X9 true-color U2 shots enlarged big, so that military analysts could quickly adjudicate certain things INTUITIVELY. It wasn't mapping per se, nor composite imagery. The objective was as accurate natural color along with high detail as possible via overflight. That would allow commanders how to best inform the specialists where to further look. This much I know.

Since the maintenance frequency was high due to all the heat, my own brain got picked because I came up with a cooler way of doing the same thing. But that ran counter to the income interests of those holding the maintenance contract, and the Govt has a lot of money, so why bother?

What I don't know is who made the actual enlargers themselves, which were no doubt highly complex machines based on an almost unlimited budget. Nor do I know what happened to all that specialized gear. Replacement parts ran out, the U2 program was cancelled, satellite imagery improved, and now you've got things like Lidar. Still, there's nothing quite like a highly detailed film view. In my own days of geological and archaeological mapmaking, even old 1930's fly-over stereoscope black and white shots showed detail way better than anything Google Earth style today.

And as always, it's a treat to discuss these kinds of things with you, Lachlan, due to your own obvious expertise, even if there is a certain amount of debate on specifics.

The anxiety for me is less about breaking something and more about the item having some flaw right out of the box. Since at this point these are niche products out of small or sometimes one-man shops, sold direct instead of through a large/reputable retailer, I have zero confidence in things like quality control (regardless of advertised precision and high price), and dread the logistics of having to re-pack and ship things back and forth instead of returning something to a store. I have unfortunately had some exasperating experiences over the years. To be fair, this is not unique to photographic equipment and I have high standards (which should not be a problem when it comes to high end things), but nevertheless I can easily picture buying a new DeVere or Kienzle being a total nightmare.

Lachlan Young said:

With both De Vere and Kienzle, you would need to do something truly astonishingly destructive to require electrical or mechanical components more complicated than can be acquired from somewhere like RS or McMaster-Carr - neither are generally using anything truly unique if you avoid closed loop or excessively computerised heads. Kienzle are essentially more robustly made Dursts - similar patterns of design, but where Durst used die castings, Kienzle largely use a lot of welded steel of decently solid section. De Vere 504's etc were (are) largely made from sand/ investment castings that are precision machined - some of their durability (and alignments that lock down tightly) probably related to their Royal Navy contract requirements. De Vere also made machines that made Durst's 10x10's look cheap - for similar markets as some of the Saltzman monsters (which, let's be frank about it, largely came into popular view because their institutional owners divested them into the hands of pro/ custom labs because they'd got their hands on the latest and greatest 10x10"+ machines from various highly specialist small companies, essentially all of whom turned up their toes sometime in the 1990s)

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DREW WILEY said:

The dominant graphics brand here was Olec-Stoesser - various custom mixes of oval and round pins as specifically requested.

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These are plate punches, not the film punches. Different stages of the process. Depending on the format there are Kodak standard plate punches too. There are Billows punches that make the Kodak one look like a puny featherweight, but they match up properly with Kodak pin bars (as really good punch and die toolmaking should) and Kodak punches.

Having looked into getting custom pin bars made, certain individuals (not naming names) tried to wriggle out of making Kodak standard ones for reasons (if you read between the lines) that made it very clear the standards demanded by the Kodak system had much less go/ no go wriggle room than others.

The reality is that the level of precision that Condit was operating at was about that of high quality commercial hole punch mechanisms (there are several register punch systems out there today that use those mechanisms in one way or another as they make punches a fraction of the price), which is plenty adequate if you are prepared to accept having to make a closed system (fine for craft, not so good for large scale industry).

DREW WILEY said:

dedicated high-security NSA facility

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No, maybe the NRO though - they built all sorts of specialist darkroom kit over the years.

DREW WILEY said:

nor composite imagery

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I don't think you're completely comprehending how colour composite imagery is done (ever wondered why things like Aviphot have the sensitisation they have?) - or that it's far more intuitively useful for immediate visual analysis than anything in full colour (NASA's FIRMS is an example of a usage of a form of composite imagery, overlaid on extant map data - there are many other examples that can be readily found that demonstrate the use of specifically filtered and tight registration exposures (be it B&W film or digital) which are then RGB assigned at output).

The output media was often Ciba/ Ilfochrome, potentially at significant enlargement through Wratten equivalent dichroics, so I think you can see why the power was needed.

It seems like my Beseler 4x5 is like a jalopy compared to a limo, after reading about the high end enlargers here!

Lachlan - I'd reply, "read my lips", except that you can't in this case. First, I said NSA, not NRO or NASA. That was the APPLICATION; I have no idea who built the machines themselves. Only the additive colorheads came from Durst. It had nothing to do with composite imagery - that was not the point, and probably would have required digital control if it had been - something outright prohibited in the facility because they wanted a brass-tacks safeguard against any kind of digital manipulation. Other facilities had that option. I've seen kinda the ultimate of that; my own nephew worked at LBL stitching NASA frames of the back side of the moon at a six million dollar workstation with a six foot
wide high-detail screen.

There's no reason to believe the output media was Ciba, which had quite idiosyncratic color even heavily masked. I doubt anyone thought in "Wratten equivalent" terms (47B, 68. 29). Makers of dichroic color separation filters had their own standards, and did it in high volume. I saw the filter banks with their controls, and they were high density single glass R,G, and B, and not spectral cutoff sandwich style like I use. Hence the heat. But with increased heat, there is increased spectral shift in peak filter sensitivity, so it's kinda like chasing your tail. But maybe that's the only way they could cram all that into an extant colorhead housing.

Second - Condit didn't make plate punches, strictly film. Therefore each reference strips they held with respect to past serial number punch they produced was on mylar, rather than on even more stable shim stock like Ternes Burton or Stoesser, who catered more to the printing industry, and used larger pins. I have punches and pin bars of both styles, and know how to do precise pin spacing adjustments anyway. Ternes Burton is great is you want a custom bar or punch exactly mated to something produced earlier, whether it was their own product originally or not. But again, I don't want to confuse these with the kind of high-volume punches used in certain aspects of the offset printing industry. That's the source of the confusion between what you're implying and what I am. Think more in terms of the needs of color carbon printers or limited edition lithographers, etc, or those past dye transfer printers who used big contact imagesetter separations rather than enlarging onto matrix film.

Your comparison of Conduit to commercial paper hole punches is ludicrous. Impoverished dye transfer printers would sometimes buy well-made old Boston 1/4-inch 3-hole punches (far better than what office supplies sell today),
but that's more like the old Kodak system itself. You're a bit behind the times (aren't we all at this point?).

DREW WILEY said:

There's no reason to believe the output media was Ciba, which had quite idiosyncratic color even heavily masked. I doubt anyone thought in "Wratten equivalent" terms (47B, 68. 29)

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OK, I get it, you're profoundly unfamiliar with the most basic and fundamental aspects of how a great deal of colour-composite aerial imaging was, and may still be (to a limited extent) done from in-flight direct separation negs etc. A small amount of research in the right places would tell you how to do it, more-or-less at a paint-by-numbers level (i.e. it was a set of routine procedures done by fairly low-level technical staff).

We can leave it at that, along with the muddled story about who had commissioned those heads.

DREW WILEY said:

Second - Condit didn't make plate punches, strictly film. Therefore each reference strips they held with respect to past serial number punch they produced was on mylar, rather than on even more stable shim stock like Ternes Burton or Stoesser, who catered more to the printing industry, and used larger pins. I have punches and pin bars of both styles, and know how to do precise pin spacing adjustments anyway. Ternes Burton is great is you want a custom bar or punch exactly mated to something produced earlier, whether it was their own product originally or not. But again, I don't want to confuse these with the kind of high-volume punches used in certain aspects of the offset printing industry. That's the source of the confusion between what you're implying and what I am. Think more in terms of the needs of color carbon printers or limited edition lithographers, etc, or those past dye transfer printers who used big contact imagesetter separations rather than enlarging onto matrix film.

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The Condit punch and the Kodak film punch are nearly immediately contemporary to each other - wash-off relief and even dye-transfer itself immediately pre-date both of them. Initially for DT the procedure was: Visual registration of DT matrices that were taped together; they were then permanently registered by cut-and-turn; printing was effected with a special blanket that they registered to. The Kodak punch has real advantages in many areas, but if you were hammering your way through a stack of 8x10 transparencies that needed masked and separated for whatever output procedures - the fact that the Condit punch did not potentially require leaders taped on to film in the dark would have been helpful. Anyway, that most of this was about convenience (or whatever Bob Pace might have encouraged people to buy from his friend) is rather brought home by the fact that very few had the Condit punch in isolation, almost all were using the Kodak punch for assembly steps, and that Durst (who had big industrial toolmaking scale) managed to make a small pin punch that didn't demand matching to contact frame/ enlarger. Kodak's scale allowed for relatively affordable precision - just about every process camera ever made had a Kodak film punch (or a directly compatible one) in the back of it (that was direct from printing industry engineers from one of the biggest companies who dealt with and made process cameras) - Condit's market was (to all intents and purposes) a regional sector of the compositing/ dye transfer/ retouching market that serviced the US advertising industry - nothing they did was outside of what a skilled punch and die toolmaker can do, it's just that Bob Pace heavily recommended their products. If you look at (or actually use) many ex-printing industry film punches (and often the matching plate punches) they are very, very often Kodak pin size and spacing compliant. This seemed to change with the arrival of CTF (albeit that drum scanning and film output significantly pre-date the advent of PET film base - with colour/ contrast correction by vacuum tube logic) and some FOGRA standard changes.

{Moderator hat on}
Gentlemen:
Perhaps the discussions about Ciba materials and registration punches could take place elsewhere than a thread asking about an enlarger recommendation for a relatively new darkroom printer.
I'd hate to have to delete all that high energy text entry.
{Hat off again}

At least give me credit for not bringing up water-jacket cooled stainless steel colorheads.

At least give me credit for not bringing up water-jacket cooled stainless steel colorheads.

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Two blowers are good enough for me

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john_s said:

It seems like my Beseler 4x5 is like a jalopy compared to a limo, after reading about the high end enlargers here!

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I love my Beseler 4x5 enlargers, been using one since I was in high school.

My brother used one of those classic beehive Beseler 4X5 enlargers, strictly for black and white printing. If he wanted a large color print, he'd send the chrome to me for printing. His darkroom was also "interesting". The walls were completely covered with old Natl Geographic maps, except for the black paint directly behind the enlarger itself. He had quite a sense of humor.

mshchem said:

I love my Beseler 4x5 enlargers, been using one since I was in high school.

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I've got a B45 with a Zone VI vc head.....but my 5x7" Durst 138 is rock solid and stays in alignment better.

GregY said:

I've got a B45 with a Zone VI vc head.....but my 5x7" Durst 138 is rock solid and stays in alignment better.

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Is your Zone VI VC head the first (4x5) model? I had one but I wasn't happy with it. Now I have an Aristo VCL4500 with a RHDesigns StopClock Vario which is a pretty nice combo. I take your point about alignment though!

john_s said:

Is your Zone VI VC head the first (4x5) model? I had one but I wasn't happy with it. Now I have an Aristo VCL4500 with a RHDesigns StopClock Vario which is a pretty nice combo. I take your point about alignment though!

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I bought it so long ago i can't remember but it's still working like a charm. i ditched the under lens filters just as soon as i got the variable contrast head.