Krokus Enlarger Lens Question

Hi All,

I bought a Krokus 66 enlarger a while back to experiment with enlarging 3 1/4 sq negs. I notice now that the threaded lens mount sits at the bottom (top, actually!) of a very deep recess and if I screw in any of my normal enlarging lenses (EL Nikkor, etc.) they disappear up inside the recess and I can only just get at the aperture ring with my fingernails.

Does anyone know whether the Krokus 66 was, perhaps, supplied with a different type of lens (ie different lens grouping that might make it physically longer) or whether something is missing?

All thoughts and suggestions gratefully received!

Best wishes,

Steve

I used to have a Krokus 69 and had a similar problem too! There were different lens mounts supplied and for the 80/105 mm lenses the flat ones could be used. However, when using the 50 mm enlarging lens I had to use a the one with a deep recess in order to position the lens closer to the negative. I guess you just have to get used to it.

I don't know about the Krokus (made in Poland, IIRC), but I understand that most Soviet enlargers were designed to put the enlarger lens much closer to the negative than is the case with most Western enlargers. For this reason, many Soviet enlarger lenses have unusually long barrels by Western standards, and these lenses sometimes can't be used with Western enlargers, at least not for enlargements above a certain size, because they don't focus properly.

If you're running into a similar design issue, you might be able to use an M39 extension tube to move the lens further out and make the controls more accessible. You can probably find these on eBay. Alternatively, you could look for a Soviet or Polish enlarger lens. These can be had pretty inexpensively on eBay. In fact, some of these come with extension tubes. I've got a 50mm Industar-96U that has a short barrel but comes with an extension tube, so it can be used with either Soviet or Western enlargers.

FWIW, I just did some eBay searches, and I found both M39 extension tubes and the Industar-96U lens that I know comes with an extension tube:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7589666366
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7590785291
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7589112883
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7587598092

Note that all of these sellers are located in Ukraine or Russia. I have no affiliation with any of them.

Thank you both very much. I am reassured that I'm not doing anything wrong and now have an idea how to move forward.
Cheers,
Steve

Steve,

Krokus products were represented by AICO in the UK; since I left the old country a long time ago I am not sure if they are still around and willing to help.

As far as I can recall, Krokus uses M42X1 screw thread instead of the more common Leica 39X26TPI thread, I feel sure that you can find various ways to get a lens to fit correctly.

When I adapted a DeJur 4x5 enlarger for 35mm film, the 50mm lens had to be mounted in a deeply recessed lens board. I found a plastic bottle that fit tightly onto the aperture ring and extended it to where the aperture could easily be moved.

Jim Jones said:

When I adapted a DeJur 4x5 enlarger for 35mm film, the 50mm lens had to be mounted in a deeply recessed lens board. I found a plastic bottle that fit tightly onto the aperture ring and extended it to where the aperture could easily be moved.

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I'd been wondering about this, but with a rubber lens hood. The bottle idea sounds better, being more rigid. I had originally thought of counting the f-stop clicks, but I guess I could even mark them on the exposed piece of the bottle. Thread size is definitely 39mm, and I will experiment with extension tubes as well. It's one of those cases where the experimenting is half the fun!

Best wishes,

Steve

Old thread but something ought to be said.

Making that Soviet comment on a thread related to a Polish enlarger was out of place, sign of ignorance, and hopefully not meant as disrespectful. In general Polish engineers were going exactly opposite to what Soviets were up to. Krokus 69 was a significant departure from previous PZO models and was trying to emulate Durst. It succeeded to a degree, was far faster to operate than previous models, but not necessarily stronger built vs. earlier 3-legged design. It was also viewed as direct competition to Magnifax, but probably not a winner in the end.

The thread was of course about the Krokus 66, an older column design (yet time proven) that persisted in virtually all PZO models for any negative size and only succeeded by 69 model, which was last model to be made.

Witold said:

Old thread but something ought to be said.

Making that Soviet comment on a thread related to a Polish enlarger was out of place, sign of ignorance, and hopefully not meant as disrespectful. In general Polish engineers were going exactly opposite to what Soviets were up to. Krokus 69 was a significant departure from previous PZO models and was trying to emulate Durst. It succeeded to a degree, was far faster to operate than previous models, but not necessarily stronger built vs. earlier 3-legged design. It was also viewed as direct competition to Magnifax, but probably not a winner in the end.

The thread was of course about the Krokus 66, an older column design (yet time proven) that persisted in virtually all PZO models for any negative size and only succeeded by 69 model, which was last model to be made.

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As well as supplying one of the few enlarging lenses to incorporate its own colour filtration.

Martin Rickards said:

As well as supplying one of the few enlarging lenses to incorporate its own colour filtration.

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Boy, that Janpol enlarging lens. Irrespective of some negativity it received, it was an engineering gem. A piece of history that belongs with most major developments in photography.

Witold said:

Boy, that Janpol enlarging lens. Irrespective of some negativity it received, it was an engineering gem. A piece of history that belongs with most major developments in photography.

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There is a tendency to equate all Soviet bloc engineering. Some engineering expertise persisted in Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia which was far superior to the average Russian product (Kalishnikovs excepted)

Witold said:

Old thread but something ought to be said.

Making that Soviet comment on a thread related to a Polish enlarger was out of place, sign of ignorance, and hopefully not meant as disrespectful. In general Polish engineers were going exactly opposite to what Soviets were up to. Krokus 69 was a significant departure from previous PZO models and was trying to emulate Durst. It succeeded to a degree, was far faster to operate than previous models, but not necessarily stronger built vs. earlier 3-legged design. It was also viewed as direct competition to Magnifax, but probably not a winner in the end.

The thread was of course about the Krokus 66, an older column design (yet time proven) that persisted in virtually all PZO models for any negative size and only succeeded by 69 model, which was last model to be made.

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Poland is the home of great science, engineering ,culture. Some of the greatest physicists, mathematicians on and on. I live in Iowa USA, we are near Chicago, huge population of Americans of Polish ancestry. I get wooden lens boards from a guy in Chicago, Polish name. The most beautiful, perfectly made I've ever seen. Today the economy in Poland is excellent, faster growth and more jobs than the rest of the EU.

Martin Rickards said:

There is a tendency to equate all Soviet bloc engineering. Some engineering expertise persisted in Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia which was far superior to the average Russian product (Kalishnikovs excepted)

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And here at Apug most soviet cameras are not even knowm.

AgX said:

And here at Apug most soviet cameras are not even known.

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Not sure what you mean by this, but Soviet cameras (specifically) are exact proof of what has just been stated: far behind technology and even expectations. One can make excuses why this was so, which changes nothing about the end result. While the Contax and Leica derivatives retained the looks, they all only managed so so reliability and more importantly predictability on top of inherent crudeness . There are some great optics from the Soviet era, but buying any camera was a gamble and some of them were just display items (seemingly by design, no matter how unintended). I own several and I always like looking at them, probably because they remind me of their German origins, which so far I've had no funds to splurge on.

However, the main point of my reviving of this thread was to point out the separation of technical minds between Poland and USSR. No question same applied to Czechs and East Germans. I felt the correction was called for ... 13 years later.

-) if you look through the list of soviet cameras most of them never have been mentioned on Apug

-) you are comparing apples to oranges: what market share Contax and Leica cameras had on the western market? And thus what importance had a lower quality of their soviet copies?

-) to my mind a general evaluation of quality should be based on the average camera so to say from both worlds

-) the Zenit for instance was quite successful on some western markets as the western manufacturers just did not/could not come up with something in that price range (reasons are many, from overcomplexity to labour costs and valuta issues).

-) Even amongst high-end manufactured western cameras there is shit due to bad design, thus manufacturing quality cannot even be the superior scale


(By the way, my latest japanese camera, virgin out of the box, broke down after just 30 exposures.)

AgX said:

-) if you look through the list of soviet cameras most of them never have been mentioned on Apug

-) you are comparing apples to oranges: what market share Contax and Leica cameras had on the western market? And thus what importance had a lower quality of their soviet copies?

-) to my mind a general evaluation of quality should be based on the average camera so to say from both worlds

-) the Zenit for instance was quite successful on some western markets as the western manufacturers just did not/could not come up with something in that price range (reasons are many, from overcomplexity to labour costs and valuta issues).

-) Even amongst high-end manufactured western cameras there is shit due to bad design, thus manufacturing quality cannot even be the superior scale


(By the way, my latest japanese camera, virgin out of the box, broke down after just 30 exposures.)

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I fully agree on market differences. We were discussing though quality of engineering and a jab placed on it 13 years ago with implied "equality of quality" in the so called Soviet section of the world.

Pretty much all USSR derived cameras are crude concoctions of western "siblings". many are usable pieces, a lot are simply unpredictable, it's the history they have. Any device can break and die any time, same applies to Hasy or similarly priced "greats". I was pointing to a strong trend in one direction not exception to the mostly reliable pieces. There were some designs in the West that required at least gentle babysitting to last and were easy to break eve with small misuse (Contaflex, Retinas SLR to name a couple), and some like Rollei SL35 were just lemons by design. But majority were simply a pleasure to be hold and amazing engineering. None of that you would ever find in a USSR derivatives.

And again, it was not my point to hijack this thread into this kind of territory, it is for a dedicated one, if one so chooses.

Martin Rickards said:

There is a tendency to equate all Soviet bloc engineering. Some engineering expertise persisted in Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia which was far superior to the average Russian product (Kalishnikovs excepted)

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FWIW, my first enlarger was a Krokus 35mm, which served me well for several years for serious Photo Club competition work. Only sold it because I was having a break from darkroom work after a house move, It was solidly and straightforwardly designed and built, inexpensive but not "cheaply" made.
At college we also used Meopta (Czech) microscopes for serious studies.

Hello All,
I'm probably pleased and surprised in equal proportions to see my 2006 thread re-surfacing! As an update, I've now changed my primary enlarger to a Meopta Opemus 6, though I couldn't bear to dispose of the Krokus. I've generally been happy with the Opemus, though the negative carrier supplied is a bit of a weak point and leaves a lot to be desired. The sliding masks for differing negative sizes slide rather too easily, necessitating taping in position. Swapping the 35mm masks/carrier glass for 35mm/MF use was more faffing than it was worth and with the 35mm masks fitted, the carrier didn't grip the negs adequately. All things considered, I elected to keep the original carrier for purely MF work and I made my own negative carriers for 35mm and Realist format printing. Those work very well.
Best wishes,

Steve

Is there no chance to open the carrier and adjust/add friction to the sliding masks?

I must admit that35 mm negatives also seem less than firmly held in my Opemus.