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I've had this Zone VI cold light head laying around for years unused. It came with my Beseler 45MX enlarger, but the way it was just set down through the top of the enlarger head to rest upon the negative carriers looked haphazard and rigged-up. Some sort of wool band was stuffed around the outer edge to in an attempt to block light spill; all in all, it did not inspire confidence.
When I eventually brought the 45MX into service to complement my 23C, I remove the CL head and found a condenser head to print with. Not bad but contrast is an issue and I tend to find myself printing with grade 1 to 00 VC filters to compensate.
In addition, I recently started reading all of the Zone VI newsletters in which Picker relentlessly attacks condenser head enlargers as being impossible to use for "real" printing (as well as RC paper, but we will leave that alone for now).
This got me to wondering if I should try to revive this head.
Looks like it is the earlier head, as (if I read right during research) it appears to produce "white" light and not the "aquamarine blue" light of the 2nd generation heads Zone VI produced.
Also, while the lamp works, I am noticing some phosphor delamination on the tube which cannot be good.
As I also understand, I would also need to purchase a used Zone VI stabilizer, which runs about $100 on Ebay to have good, repeatable results. The enlarger was bought second-hand and the stabilizer was either lost/separated from the enlarger, or never used in the first place.
I am concerned that after buying a stabilizer that either the head or stabilizer will not be long lived enough to make it worthwhile and that the slap-dash mounting setup will result in varying exposures despite the addition of a stabilizer.
Posts I have seen also seem to imply that the white-light version of the head is not very useful for printing VC papers anyway...
A modern LED lamp house would be nice, but is beyond my means at the time.
Opinions on if I should resurrect this beast or if I should continue fine tuning my exposure and development times on my film to try to bring the negative contrast down to print in the middle range with a condenser head?
After reading so much about it, I would hate to miss out on the experience, but would also hate to spend a lot of time and energy re-aligning my processes to be let down by equipment failure or lack of flexibility in the future.
When I eventually brought the 45MX into service to complement my 23C, I remove the CL head and found a condenser head to print with. Not bad but contrast is an issue and I tend to find myself printing with grade 1 to 00 VC filters to compensate.
In addition, I recently started reading all of the Zone VI newsletters in which Picker relentlessly attacks condenser head enlargers as being impossible to use for "real" printing (as well as RC paper, but we will leave that alone for now).
This got me to wondering if I should try to revive this head.
Looks like it is the earlier head, as (if I read right during research) it appears to produce "white" light and not the "aquamarine blue" light of the 2nd generation heads Zone VI produced.
Also, while the lamp works, I am noticing some phosphor delamination on the tube which cannot be good.
As I also understand, I would also need to purchase a used Zone VI stabilizer, which runs about $100 on Ebay to have good, repeatable results. The enlarger was bought second-hand and the stabilizer was either lost/separated from the enlarger, or never used in the first place.
I am concerned that after buying a stabilizer that either the head or stabilizer will not be long lived enough to make it worthwhile and that the slap-dash mounting setup will result in varying exposures despite the addition of a stabilizer.
Posts I have seen also seem to imply that the white-light version of the head is not very useful for printing VC papers anyway...
A modern LED lamp house would be nice, but is beyond my means at the time.
Opinions on if I should resurrect this beast or if I should continue fine tuning my exposure and development times on my film to try to bring the negative contrast down to print in the middle range with a condenser head?
After reading so much about it, I would hate to miss out on the experience, but would also hate to spend a lot of time and energy re-aligning my processes to be let down by equipment failure or lack of flexibility in the future.