Kindermann vs Saunders

Good morning from my side of the world,

I had a quick question about the rebranding of enlargers. I heard great things about the Saunders LPL 7700 enlargers, and I am looking for some of these for my darkroom. Is the Saunders LPL 7700 the same as the Kindermann LPL 707B but rebranded?

Hi David,

Thank you for the confirmation! I heard these are great enlargers that are built well and simple to learn to use for a community darkroom.

Concur on it being a great enlarger. Used one for many years and still have it, but it's now in the original box only because I picked up a Omega D5 with the Dichroic head for a bargain price. Given how little I print 4x5 these days I'm tempted to switch back.

The dichroic ones are a little fiddly to rewire the lamp socket on.

The really interesting oddity that LPL made for Fuji was a 7452 column/ runner with a 7700 condenser head - looks much more solid than the regular 7700 can be unless you brace the column to a wall.

Lachlan Young said:

The dichroic ones are a little fiddly to rewire the lamp socket on.

The really interesting oddity that LPL made for Fuji was a 7452 column/ runner with a 7700 condenser head - looks much more solid than the regular 7700 can be unless you brace the column to a wall.

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I've never had any issues with stability with my 7700. The Fuji version may be more stable, but IMHO it is a case of well-engineered being compared to over-engineered.

Hi Lachlan and Lesman,

Appreciate both your input.

@lensman - I took a survey poll of my community, and they shoot primarily 35 and 120mm, so I believe the LPL will be great.

@lachlan - The Kindermann that I am looking at is soley B&W and not dichroic. Therefore, what are your thoughts of the stability with the B&W condenser?

For clarity, the various names mostly relate to who is distributing the LPL product in the market it was distributed in.
I'm sure there are minor differences based mostly on when the particular model was actually sold.
As far as stability, I have two 7700s - one with variable contrast dichroic head and one with colour dichroic head. I have used the variable contrast head almost exclusively. And as far as I can tell, there have been no issues with stability for me, printing up to 11x14, despite the fact that my enlarger resides on a rolling kitchen microwave cart!
That includes when I incorporate a full spilt grade approach to contrast control, meaning I spin the filter controls in the midst of a multi-exposure print procedure.
I have more concern with how relatively low the illumination level is when printing from 35mm negatives. If I had my wish, there would have been a 35mm mixing box option available, to shorten printing times from that format. That probably isn't a concern with the condenser head.

isocero said:

Therefore, what are your thoughts of the stability with the B&W condenser

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Much the same as all the others - it's the column being about a foot too long, relative to the rest of the dimensions (because a 16x20"/ 18x22" print capacity was a critical selling point for the markets it was aimed at in the 1980s) unless you use the bracket from the wall mount kit to make it more stable. With smaller prints, they seem fine. They're just not a De Vere or a Leitz Focomat IIC, or some of the better medium format Dursts (M805). Having had several of them apart over the years to fix various issues (all wear and tear or operator misuse), they're well enough built for something that was aimed at the Advanced Amateur market who wanted to make bigger prints than the 14x17"-ish max of the smaller LPL 6700.

Lachlan Young said:

Much the same as all the others - it's the column being about a foot too long, relative to the rest of the dimensions (because a 16x20"/ 18x22" print capacity was a critical selling point for the markets it was aimed at in the 1980s) unless you use the bracket from the wall mount kit to make it more stable. With smaller prints, they seem fine. They're just not a De Vere or a Leitz Focomat IIC, or some of the better medium format Dursts (M805). Having had several of them apart over the years to fix various issues (all wear and tear or operator misuse), they're well enough built for something that was aimed at the Advanced Amateur market who wanted to make bigger prints than the 14x17"-ish max of the smaller LPL 6700.

Click to expand...

Hi Lachlan,

Thank you for the response. I actually have a Durst M805 coming to me that I was going to use in the color darkroom, and the LPL 707B in the B&W darkroom (which will also be used in enlarging workshops).