Mixing chamber for the Beseler 23CIII

[Gabe]

Hello, I just got a beseler 23C III not too long ago. I’ve always done my darkroom stuff in classrooms so everything was mostly set up for me. Now that I’m entering the world of at home enlarging I’m realizing there was a lot I didn’t know about. I have the Variable Contrast Head, and I realized it has mixing chambers. Now I was lucky enough to get the both the 6x9 and the 35mm when I bought the enlarger, but I’m only going to be shooting 35mm and 6x7. Do I need to buy the 6x7 mixing chamber?

 

[MattKing]

Well done.
Most likely you won't need the 6x7 mixing chamber - the 6x9 chamber will work fine. You may end up using it for 35mm as well.
Matching the mixing chamber to the format ensures that you minimize printing times and extraneous flare, but the differences are small.

 

[Gabe]

Well done.
Most likely you won't need the 6x7 mixing chamber - the 6x9 chamber will work fine. You may end up using it for 35mm as well.
Matching the mixing chamber to the format ensures that you minimize printing times and extraneous flare, but the differences are small.

Okay that’s what I was hoping! Thanks Matt. If you don’t mind me asking what do you mean by extraneous flare?

 

[MattKing]

If your light source is bigger than your negative, light will be able to bounce around a bit and hit the negative from a bunch of different angles - flare.

 

[Chan Tran]

I use 4x5 mixing chamber on both the Beseler 45 and CB7 without problem.