Enlarger vibration

[faberryman]

It is hard to imagine an Omega D5XL, mounted to the wall and braced at the top, not being steady. Have you checked your alignment with the table you are printing on? Is the table level and the negative carrier parallel? Just thinking vibration is a red herring.

 

[dpurdy]

There is a simple trick I do to see vibrations. You can set a cup of water or coffee on the easel and look at the reflection of a light source on the surface of the liquid. If there is any vibration at all it will be easy to see it. You can use the enlarger head as the light source you watch in the reflection.

 

[Paul Howell]

The only time I had an issue with vibration was with a very old Federal 4X5 enlarger which I had mounted to a wall. I was living in Sacramento at the time, my darkroom was in a basement. I could feel the vibration with my hands lightly pressed against the condenser assembly. Once I remounted the enlarger on to a baseboard and made sure the work bench was a few inches from the wall the vibrations stopped. Later figured that it was coming from the refrigerator next the wall just up stairs from the darkroom.

 

[M Carter]

Flash for pinting...tell me more.

I wanted to dupe some really-pushed E6 (EPJ 320t - gorgeous color and grain when pushed) onto Velvia - the lab said "that's impossible".

I hate that word, but I only had a cheap condenser enlarger (Beseler Printmaker 35). So I made a new front condenser door out of cardboard and taped a cheap flash to it, so the flash hit the light bulb. This gave me a "daylight" enlarger. I think I stuck like 1/4 CTO lighting gel in the filter drawer to take the flash from blue-ish to daylight. I also chopped up some ND gel to fit the filter drawer. So I had the light bulb for focusing and framing, and a radio slave hooked to the flash for exposing.

I tested with 4x5 color polaroid; I just used a block of wood to hold the polaroid back level, did a strip test and dialed in the exposure with aperture and ND, then moved to 4x5 or 8x10 sheet film. Worked fantastically. So I'm thinking for large prints, I'll at least try this with my MXT, and use full-CTO gel to get the color in the tungsten range (so the B&W paper will get the right color of light... hopefully...) Certainly worth a test, though I'll need to rig up something that replaces the lamphouse, or get a spare lamphouse and cut a hole in it. I lay awake and figure all this stuff out when I should be sleeping.

E6 Duped to Velvia:

 

[craigclu]

Even with my equipment braced well, I found that street traffic of the wrong sort of vehicle could send perceived motion seen on my grain focuser. I live on a quiet, residential street so it isn't a consistent problem but I was quite surprised by what made it through the ground to my basement darkroom's cement floor.

 

[Arklatexian]

Even with my equipment braced well, I found that street traffic of the wrong sort of vehicle could send perceived motion seen on my grain focuser. I live on a quiet, residential street so it isn't a consistent problem but I was quite surprised by what made it through the ground to my basement darkroom's cement floor.

Another source of vibration from a darkroom's cement floor is a busy railroad within half a mile or so from your darkroom. Trains usually announce their presence with a horn and maybe a rumble. If you have started an exposure, turn off the enlarger, remember how much more time the print needs, Carefully cover the print. After the train sounds fade in the distance and "you have not bumped the enlarger", uncover the print, turn the enlarger on for the rest of the exposure. The print won't even know there was an interruption...........Regards!

 

[mshchem]

One thing to be absolutely sure. Try making a good contact print. See if there's any camera shake

 

[BMbikerider]

If your head is braced and the bottom is secure, this is an obvious possibility negative pop... also the negative stage or lens stage on some enlargers can slip but my money is on neg poppiing..Using a glass carrier requires some dedication to figure out how to clean the glass or the dust will drive you nuts.

Whilst I have in the past had problems when the negative 'pops' due to the heat from the lamp, I now use a glass carrier and sort out any dust problems afterwards which have never been a real problem. Would it be possible to go down the route a friend of mine has, and that is to use a LED bulb? He uses a Gamer 35mm B&W enlarger (UK Made and a blatant copy of the Leica Automat with the parallelogram supported head. ) There was only ever a glass-less carrier made. The bulb is a 7000 degree kelvin (Very cool) with a consumption of around 19 watts but an output equivalent of around 100, both brighter and cooler.. This has completely cured the problem.

 

[AgX]

Another source of vibration from a darkroom's cement floor is a busy railroad within half a mile or so from your darkroom.

Or a tram passing your house a few meters.

 

[Fraunhofer]

I have an Omega D5XL which sits on a massive wooden table on the concrete slab foundation of our house and have no issues with vibration. In a wood frame house I'd expect that the wall braces actually increase vibration esp. when the HVAC is running.

 

[Tim Stapp]

No problem at our house with the HVAC running. Ours is climate controlled. Right now, it's set on tropical. Last January, it was set on Arctic .

My darkroom is set up in an upstairs bedroom. I haven't noticed any vibration induced blur from either my 23CII or CB7 enlargers, unless the twice a day double bottom asphalt hauler goes by. But, I hear him coming and don't project until he is gone.