Heiland LED Head As A Replacement For Legacy Cold Light Heads

An OT discussion began to emerge on another thread about the Heiland LED enlarging heads, so I thought I start it as a discussion in it's own right.

Backstory

My 25+ year old Zone VI VC Cold Light died of old age - well the soft light tube did, I guess. No parts available anywhere. The tubes, in particular are entirely unobtainium whether for the Zone VI heads, Aristo, and - I would assume - for any older cold light/fluorescent type system. NOS not available, used not available, new not available ..

First Effort

I tried going old school with a condenser on my Omega D-II and using above the lens filtration. It worked but was very slow and nowhere near as subtle as what a true VC head gives you. More importantly, I was not seeing the range and type of contrast I was used to with the Zone VI when I used either Ilford or Kodak filters..


Oh No! What Have I Done?

I'd been looking at the Heiland system for a while now, knowing the Zone VI was getting closer and closer to "End Of Life" aka "Death" (aren't we all). But the price held me back. But, I hate the condenser solution so hard. So ... I raided the piggy bank and ordered the Heiland from Catlabs.

What Did I Get?

I ordered the Heiland LED VC head for the generic Omega enlarger mount. This mounts into the lower lamp housing in place of the condenser because the unit is so light, it needs some weight to stay down when the lift lever is dropped down.

I ordered this with the basic B&W controller. I have no interest in- nor need for the fancy printing computer. I split VC print everything, using soft light to manage the highlights and hard light to manage the shadows, both in the overall print and during doging and burning. I have no idea what "grade" I am printing, and again, don't care.


Status

Order placed this week. I was told delivery is 3-5 weeks.


Will keep interested parties posted here. Also interested to hear from others who have this head who have insights about how it might be best used.

I have had the Heiland head for 3 years now. I used it to replace an older LED head but wanted the convenience of a VC head rather than using filters. Here is my experience: First, the fit was not that great, I had to modify the bracket by filing the slots. I was told that Omega D5s vary a bit in construction, and that's the way it is. Not terribly pleased after spending gobs of money on what I assumed would be a precision-engineered German product.

I bought the less expensive VC controller and it does the job quite well for me. I especially like that I can vary the intensity over 3 stops, giving me leeway for burning and dodging. I also found that the head seems to print hard, that is the #5 exposures can be quite short compared to filtering with Ilford filters.

And last, the head produces extraordinarily sharp images, maybe because the LEDs act like a bunch of pin-sources. If you're used to a cold head, that may come as a bit of a surprise. I love it. I was afraid by giving up the condensers the prints would lose their edge. Not so.

Pieter12 said:

I have had the Heiland head for 3 years now. I used it to replace an older LED head but wanted the convenience of a VC head rather than using filters. Here is my experience: First, the fit was not that great, I had to modify the bracket by filing the slots. I was told that Omega D5s vary a bit in construction, and that's the way it is. Not terribly pleased after spending gobs of money on what I assumed would be a precision-engineered German product.

I bought the less expensive VC controller and it does the job quite well for me. I especially like that I can vary the intensity over 3 stops, giving me leeway for burning and dodging. I also found that the head seems to print hard, that is the #5 exposures can be quite short compared to filtering with Ilford filters.

And last, the head produces extraordinarily sharp images, maybe because the LEDs act like a bunch of pin-sources. If you're used to a cold head, that may come as a bit of a surprise. I love it. I was afraid by giving up the condensers the prints would lose their edge. Not so.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback. I was told the D5 was a special case. I have an original D II pushup which should take the generic Omega mount without concern - so I was told.

What surprises me is that they don't have one head with different interchangeable mounts. If I run off and buy, say, an Beseler next year, I should just be able to swap mounts - apparently not.

Then again, there is a guy not very far from me selling a pristine Durst 8x10 Labarator ...

Pieter12 said:

I have had the Heiland head for 3 years now. I used it to replace an older LED head but wanted the convenience of a VC head rather than using filters. Here is my experience: First, the fit was not that great, I had to modify the bracket by filing the slots. I was told that Omega D5s vary a bit in construction, and that's the way it is. Not terribly pleased after spending gobs of money on what I assumed would be a precision-engineered German product.

I bought the less expensive VC controller and it does the job quite well for me. I especially like that I can vary the intensity over 3 stops, giving me leeway for burning and dodging. I also found that the head seems to print hard, that is the #5 exposures can be quite short compared to filtering with Ilford filters.

And last, the head produces extraordinarily sharp images, maybe because the LEDs act like a bunch of pin-sources. If you're used to a cold head, that may come as a bit of a surprise. I love it. I was afraid by giving up the condensers the prints would lose their edge. Not so.

Click to expand...

How is the edge-to-edge evenness for a 4x5 negative?

chuckroast said:

How is the edge-to-edge evenness for a 4x5 negative?

Click to expand...

It seems fine. I don't print much 4x5, mostly 2-1/4. The bracket on mine is just bolted on. I'm not familiar with Beseler, but I would think it shouldn't take much to retrofit it if that comes up in the future.

Pieter12 said:

It seems fine. I don't print much 4x5, mostly 2-1/4. The bracket on mine is just bolted on. I'm not familiar with Beseler, but I would think it shouldn't take much to retrofit it if that comes up in the future.

Click to expand...

Would a picture of your final installation of the head on the D5 be possible?

Sure. I didn't realize it was so dusty. I guess I need to do some major housekeeping. Haven't printed in a while.

Thanks!

Pieter12 said:

Sure. I didn't realize it was so dusty. I guess I need to do some major housekeeping. Haven't printed in a while.

View attachment 412827View attachment 412828View attachment 412829

Click to expand...

@Pieter12


Hoping you can answer some questions. I just got the head and it seems ... defective. But before I declare that, I want to make sure I understand it's correct operation.

1) As noted, the mount for Omega does not line up well. If I were to keep it, I'd have to remove it from the LED assembly and grind out the mount ears somehow. Truly annoying for an expensive item like this.

2) Once the control is powered on, even if there is no voltage from the time, it's still has light output. Is this normal? That is, is it always on and you're supposed to leave it in "Safelight" mode when not in use? There seems to be no way to simply have the LEDs all turned off.

3) The safelight mode seems somewhat red but not a across the enitre field. Part of it is white/yellow and part red. This suggests it may be defective.

4) I may be my imagination, but the light across the diffuser seems somewhat uneven. Hard to tell until I print.

I do have a call into Catlabs to see if we can clear this up.

I have the controller connected to my f-stop timer, so that is used to turn the head on and off. I don't use the safelight mode, it seems awfully bright to me. The focus/white output is on the blue side, too. I would try to make a couple of prints and then contact CatLabs.

The mount is easy to file with a standard metal file. I did it little by little until it fit. I guess you could take a Dremel to it if you need to remove a lot of material.

Pieter12 said:

I have the controller connected to my f-stop timer, so that is used to turn the head on and off. I don't use the safelight mode, it seems awfully bright to me. The focus/white output is on the blue side, too. I would try to make a couple of prints and then contact CatLabs.

The mount is easy to file with a standard metal file. I did it little by little until it fit. I guess you could take a Dremel to it if you need to remove a lot of material.

Click to expand...

In my case, even if it not even plugged into a timer at all, I get light output. It's essential unusable this way.

When plugged into a timer, there should be no current going to the controller unless the timer is running or in focus mode.

Pieter12 said:

When plugged into a timer, there should be no current going to the controller unless the timer is running or in focus mode.

Click to expand...

Correct. But the unit here is producing light output when the timer itself is off or in focus mode.

Any news about the problem with the Heiland?

Returned and in transit this week. Hope to hear more next week. Understandable given the holiday season.

OK, finally, an update. The head & controller had to go back to Germany for warranty repair and it came back for installation yesterday.

Initial Issues

• The seams of the housing are not perfectly tight and leak a little light when the head is active. A careful application of black paper tape fixed this.
  
  
• Of greater concern was that I heard a part rattling around in the controller when I got it. I cracked it open and discovered that the nut that holds one of the cable thread posts had come off. Easy to fix, but annoying that I'd have to bother.
  
  
• As others have noted, the mount doesn't mate to the Omega D head mount points perfectly. A slight a mount of appropriate bending and it went in just fine. Minor problem.
  
  
• There is a thin felt pad along the base of the head. I wish they had used an open cell foam instead so that when the head was down it would compress and block all light. Instead there is slight amount of light leak at the Head-to-Carrier interface. It's minor but I hate light leaks of any kind in my darkroom, even when they don't matter

It's pretty clear that these are hand built and do have some manufacturing and QA tolerances. Nothing severe, but mildly annoying for a device this expensive.

Operational Observations

I have not yet printed with it, but I did fiddle with it a fair bit whilst installing it last night.

The user interface is very simple to use. You can select "Safelight" which projects a red light onto the easel, "Focus" which give you bright white light, or "Graded". There is also an intensity control that stays the same for Focus and Graded. This is quite useful as I use the white light output without a negative to get a light output baseline on a Luna Pro sitting on the easel. IOW, for a given height and f/stop, I want to have a reference light output on the easel so I can reprint consistently.

Grade is selected in 0.1 grade steps and it "rolls over". This means you can set it to Grade 0.0, and with one click, go to 5.0. This is a blessing for people like me who split VC print and don't want to fiddle with intermediate grades whilst enlarging.

A Happy Discovery

For an enlarger to be sharply in focus there are two things that have to be correct: The plane of the negative carrier must be exactly parallel to the paper easel and the plane of the lens must similarly be parallel to both the negative carrier and the easel.

With older enlargers like my ancient Omega DII, this is more or less impossible to get exactly right. You can adjust the negative carrier stage, but the lens mount is fixed. Moreover the carrier-to-easel parallelism shifts slightly as you move the enlarger up- and down. I just spent an hour with a laser tool to get that as good as I can (the table I have the easel sitting on below the enlarger has 4 corner height adjusters, which is helpful).

HOWEVER, this new Heiland head puts out a TON of light. This allows me to stop the enlarging lens down more than I was doing in the past with my relatively lower output Zone VI head. In theory, this should give me a bit more depth of field to the paper surface and make slight parallelism shifts unimportant - at least that's what I am telling myself...

And Finally ...

Nits aside, this shows great promise as a way to keep my 70 year-ish old Omega humming.

Despite the bumps, Omer at CatLabs was right on things, paying for shipping and return, etc. without a question.

More when/if I know more. Happy to answer questions.

ADDENDUM: One thing I should mention. This head requires you to have an existing mount for an Omega light source (don't know about other enlargers). It mounts in place of the lower condenser assembly and you can then remove the upper condenser and lamp housing altogether. Because the head is so light, it's needs the original Omega housing to provide enough weight to keep it down.

chuckroast said:

HOWEVER, this new Heiland head puts out a TON of light. This allows me to stop the enlarging lens down more than I was doing in the past with my relatively lower output Zone VI head. In theory, this should give me a bit more depth of field to the paper surface and make slight parallelism shifts unimportant - at least that's what I am telling myself...

Click to expand...

Despite the enormously bright output of the Heiland head, I usually turn it dow 2-3 stops because I like keeping the enlarger lens stopped down 2-3 stops from wide open to avoid diffraction.

Pieter12 said:

Despite the enormously bright output of the Heiland head, I usually turn it dow 2-3 stops because I like keeping the enlarger lens stopped down 2-3 stops from wide open to avoid diffraction.

Click to expand...

I just started printing with it and - as compared to my prior Zone VI head or using manual Ilford filters on a conventional head - it is MUCH faster. I don't just mean light output. The spectrum of the LEDs seems to match the paper better and the exposure is up to 2+ stops faster (ish).

On my first print today, the hard light, especially, required almost 4 stops less exposure with the Heiland than it did with a condenser head with an Ilford #5 filter. No doubt the Ilford filters attenuate the light a lot and probably have to overcome the natural warm bias of the incandescent bulb in that older head, but still ...

chuckroast said:

I just started printing with it and - as compared to my prior Zone VI head or using manual Ilford filters on a conventional head - it is MUCH faster. I don't just mean light output. The spectrum of the LEDs seems to match the paper better and the exposure is up to 2+ stops faster (ish).

On my first print today, the hard light, especially, required almost 4 stops less exposure with the Heiland than it did with a condenser head with an Ilford #5 filter. No doubt the Ilford filters attenuate the light a lot and probably have to overcome the natural warm bias of the incandescent bulb in that older head, but still ...

Click to expand...

I found the #5 exposures with the Heiland head to be much, much shorter than my previous set-up, a Modern Enlarger LED head with Ilford filters. And the blacks are nice and intense on the prints. I also found the head to be a little bit more like a point-source, the prints are sharper.

Sounds promising. I have 3 Zone VI setups 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10. The 5x7 and 8x10 units I got from a fellow who had on a whim bought everything Calumet sold Zone VI, went to Vermont for a workshop then went on to some other foolishness. When I bought the enlargers he was moving to the woods to start a sawmill

Hopefully these never die while I'm around. I use a Beseler head the universal VC head that's sweet, for most everything. The Zone VI VC heads like what I have are fantastic, now I just need to use them

Pieter12 said:

I found the #5 exposures with the Heiland head to be much, much shorter than my previous set-up, a Modern Enlarger LED head with Ilford filters. And the blacks are nice and intense on the prints. I also found the head to be a little bit more like a point-source, the prints are sharper.

Click to expand...

I haven't printed enough yet to confirm the improvement with sharpness.

The hard light is indeed way, way faster. I use a Luna Pro on the easel to measure light falling there as a reference point. Not only does it take 2 stops less of that to make a print, the duration of hard light exposure is at least 1 full stop shorter. Keep in mind that I am split VC printing where I am only using the 0.0 and 5.0 filtration setting. The only thing I can attribute this to is that the Heiland must match the spectral response of VC paper much more closely.

mshchem said:

Sounds promising. I have 3 Zone VI setups 4x5, 5x7 and 8x10. The 5x7 and 8x10 units I got from a fellow who had on a whim bought everything Calumet sold Zone VI, went to Vermont for a workshop then went on to some other foolishness. When I bought the enlargers he was moving to the woods to start a sawmill

Hopefully these never die while I'm around. I use a Beseler head the universal VC head that's sweet, for most everything. The Zone VI VC heads like what I have are fantastic, now I just need to use them

Click to expand...

I had a 4x5 Zone VI VC head I bought new 25 years ago and it just died late last year. I got my money - about $1000 - out of it The problem is that there are literally no replacement tubes available, so fixing it wasn't an option. I have the skills and tools to do the repair but I cannot manufacture cold light tubes

Yes, the Heiland is expensive - very expensive. $1000 25 years ago is about $1776 today according to my neighborhood AI. So, even accounting for inflation, the Heiland is 2x the price of the Zone VI. HOWEVER, it is better in every way (assuming it continues to work reliability). My only gripe is what I posted above about little problems a $3500 device should not have...

chuckroast said:

I had a 4x5 Zone VI VC head I bought new 25 years ago and it just died late last years. I got my money - about $1000 - out of it The problem is that there are literally no replacement tubes available, so fixing it wasn't an option. I have the skills and tools to do the repair but I cannot manufacture cold light tubes

Yes, the Heiland is expensive - very expensive. $1000 25 years ago is about $1776 today according to my neighborhood AI. So, even accounting for inflation, the Heiland is 2x the price of the Zone VI. HOWEVER, it is better in every way (assuming it continues to work reliability). My only gripe is what I posted above about little problems a $3500 device should not have...

Click to expand...

I bought the 8x10 and 5x7 3 Rodagons, Metrolux II timers, process timers in like new condition for grand total of $300. One man's trash is another's treasure. His daughter made t-shirts she was getting his massive dry mount press. He had a really immense ss sink that he was going to use for something else.

Best darkroom haul since my free 10 foot Arkay SS sink with stand, delivered to my driveway

chuckroast said:

The only thing I can attribute this to is that the Heiland must match the spectral response of VC paper much more closely.

Click to expand...

Nah, it's the simple fact that tungsten/halogen is really very lean on the blue sidd of the spectrum and blue LEDs on the other hand are quite efficient indeed. At the same time, the green ones are considerably less efficient, so if you use an equal number of both (which you'd typically do in a LED head to get even coverage), you pretty much automatically end up with an excess of blue light. Usually you have to dim that back down to get reasonable printing times as they otherwise tend to get too short in relation to the blue time. For color it's the same or actually even more so, but the way the paper is designed is a major factor in that case as well.