Intrepid Enlarger Tips

Hi All,
I wrote up a blog post collecting the various things I do to make life easier working with an Intrepid Enlarger (mostly the compact, but also the 4x5). If any other users out there have tips I'd love to hear them and add them to the page. Hopefully it's useful for someone.

I used an old Durst enlarger column and base board to mount my Intrepid. To get it far enough away from the column, I got a short tripod center column, any one will work as long as it’s threaded at both ends.
To level the intrepid i used a small leveling head similar to this one,

Firmware for F-stop timing is brilliant!

bdial said:

I used an old Durst enlarger column and base board to mount my Intrepid. To get it far enough away from the column, I got a short tripod center column, any one will work as long as it’s threaded at both ends.

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The enlarger columns are hard to come by in the UK (without an enlarger attached to them), and heavy duty copy stands are *bafflingly* expensive. I get by OK with the tripod. Since my setup is "temporary" (everything has to get tucked away when I'm not printing), the trade off with the tripod works out OK.

bdial said:

To level the intrepid i used a small leveling head similar to this one,

Click to expand...

I do have a levelling head, I might try it next time instead of the ball head, I think the levelling head is less likely to slip, especially with the 4x5

bdial said:

Firmware for F-stop timing is brilliant!

Click to expand...

You might no think that if you try it There's some stuff I can add to make it a bit quicker/easier, but it does work pretty well for what I need.

Nice work!

Is your "f-stop firmware" the main reason you use classic Ilford filters? Or is there some other reason?

kuhyraco said:

Nice work!

Is your "f-stop firmware" the main reason you use classic Ilford filters? Or is there some other reason?

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It probably is the main reason I started, but I've switched to using them now anyway. Swapping filters is less hassle than accurately twiddling the dial, especially when split grade printing.
Also, while they probably do behave differently under the LED than they would under tungsten, I like the idea of using the same process if I go back to a community darkroom again (building up that muscle memory).