The high cost of enlargers and darkroom equipment

There was a thread somewhere recently on the high cost of enlargers and darkroom equipment. This time I decided to try and keep it below $200, which meant finding stuff on the street, in alleys, and getting lucky on eBay.

Below is what I put together for $197, incl shipping. It started out w/ an eBay Lentar enlarger that came w/ a timer and Bogen 4 blade 8x10 easel, all for $55. Then I blew the budget on a Beseler HD 50 2.8 lens that had once had fungus, but was cleaned. It was $40 (all prices include shipping). Thermometers for $3, Walmart trays for 8x10, Home Depot for 11x14 trays. An $8 red bulb from Freestyle, and assorted stuff like Peerless spotting colors, VC contrast filter set, etc. My 11x14 print easel is the door off a kitchen cabinet. The inset part is exactly 11 inches wide.

The bench used to be old wood behind a building, and the big tub and furniture was sitting on the street. So I spent maybe $30 on screws, which is included in the $197.

Had to turn the head around to get it to 11x14, but it makes sharp prints after being aligned w/ my high quality, optical tools..... 4 little levels and a square. I bought a Bosch & Lomb magnifier to use as a grain focuser, but never could figure out how to use it, so I used an old 3rd party 135mm lens to get focus with.

Over this side of the pond you can find a lot of darkroom equipment as cheap as chips, I found a Rodogon apo lens for £60, and that was from a dealer, Meopta enlargers start at around £50, I reckon you could get a first class darkroom set up for maybe £250/£300GPB and not just from Ebay but from several dealers who sell used darkroom equipment, but certainly some higher end gear is starting to see a rise in price,
Richard

Nicely done! I lucked out last year and got an essentially complete darkroom, with two enlargers, for $150. No 11x14 trays though.

Asking prices can be ridiculous though. Someone was selling one locally on CL for $500. It looked like it had been left to the elements!

It all depends on what you want to shoot and the quality of the equipment you wish to own. You can usually get into 35mm and somewhat medium format for relatively reasonable prices. The large the format, the larger the outlay. The better quality the equipment the higher the cost.

There are many basic enlargers that can be had for very little money, right now pick up only there are 4 enlargers on the Goodwill site, , ranging from $50 to under $10, 45, need to make sure there is a negative carrier, but on a good day. On C list within a day's drive, another 4 or 5 under a $100.

I don't know how to break it to you all but , enlargers have never been so inexpensive. Yes, the good ones have gone up a little but all in all, we're still talking pennies on the dollar.

If one of my enlargers (Durst L1200 Multigraph) was still available new, it would cost over $9,000.00 in today's dollars.

I got one that originally cost $27,000 for free a few years ago (adjusted to today's inflated value, that would equate to about $60,000 if purchased new today. Professional labs close down when someone retires, estate sales pop up, architectural salvage businesses sell off the hardware, plumbing fixtures, and demolished houses, so darkroom stuff if the final occupant had a darkroom. I've turned down probably 30 free enlargers, many of them true commercial machines; I already have four, and that's it - no more space!

I think a lot of this is down to luck and good fortune. I have a full equipped darkroom for colour and B&W. I have been collecting enlargers like they were going out of fashion. I started out in my present house with a 2nd hand LPL 7700 which previously been wall mounted and I paid something like £100 for the head, transformer, timer and column. I made a new baseboard out of a piece of laminated kitchen work surface, Then I was gifted an LPL6700 colour followed by a Meopta 6x6 standard (B&W only). The original head for the LPL 7700 developed a fault so I bought for £25 another LPL7700 head to replace the faulty one (now repaired). I am almost drowning in enlargers.

My NOVA 3 slot 12x16 processor was also 2nd hand bought very cheaply with a leak from the bottom of the bleach slot which was easily repaired, A rotary film processor was also found in a junk shop and works perfectly. I think I paid £60 for that with developing drums 20 years ago.

The only things I paid (near) top money for, were my enlarging lenses, 50mm and 80mm Apo Rodagons: but then with the Meopta enlarger, that came with a 50/4.5 Schneider Componon and Nikon F4/75mm

Gee, when I moved from the farm into a town, I left three enlargers in the tumbledown farm house. House and contents were bulldozed into a pile. One enlarger was a Testrite. Good riddance! One was an old Federal, the last was a 4x5 DeJur with a cold light head. It would have made a sturdy copy stand. There was no market to sell such stuff around hare, and no place for me to store it.

momus said:

There was a thread somewhere recently on the high cost of enlargers and darkroom equipment. This time I decided to try and keep it below $200, which meant finding stuff on the street, in alleys, and getting lucky on eBay.

Below is what I put together for $197, incl shipping. It started out w/ an eBay Lentar enlarger that came w/ a timer and Bogen 4 blade 8x10 easel, all for $55.

Click to expand...

WOW, that takes me back. My very first home enlarger was a Lentar. Same as yours. I fitted mine with a lens from an old Eastman Kodak automatic black and white printer. Size of a small table and complex, so I opted for the assortment of lenses in the turret.

I loved my little Lentar.

Bob

I also loved that enlarger, used it for many years

Shouldn't we get one of the mods to change the title for the sake of accuracy, by adding the three words: "The myth of" to the existing title?

pentaxuser

I wish it were a myth pentaxuser. 99% of the time, things cost much more than I spent on this set up (which is still cranking out 11x14's like clockwork, and the prints are sharp all the way across the print). I just got lucky. You have to put up w/ stuff when using a contraption like this though. The focusing can be a little aggravating, as it likes to move a teeny bit when you get it sharp, forcing me to fiddle w/ micro adjustments back and forth. But once it's set, it usually stays that way for several negs.

When I move back down South in Nov I'll get a gooder enlarger that can do 6x6 too. I have a lot of 6x9 negs, but an old Federal enlarger is usually the cheap way to go on that. They come in condenser and diffuser models for low prices, but they're even more cantankerous to use than the Lentar. I'm also going to move to Formulary's version of Ansco 130 for a developer, so that will save me money on supplies because apparently it lasts a looooong time in stock solution. In the end, enlarger's are simple beasts, they just need to be cleaned and aligned and you're usually good to go.

BMbikerider said:

I

The only things I paid (near) top money for, were my enlarging lenses, 50mm and 80mm Apo Rodagons: but then with the Meopta enlarger, that came with a 50/4.5 Schneider Componon and Nikon F4/75mm

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My little Lentar served me well. I think it was part luck and part Ektar lenses. What I would love to have is a large format Saltzman, but it is just too heavy, too big and requires too much headroom.

Bob

momus said:

I wish it were a myth pentaxuser. 99% of the time, things cost much more than I spent on this set up (which is still cranking out 11x14's like clockwork, and the prints are sharp all the way across the print). I just got lucky.

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Well, it was just that a quick browse through all the replies did seem to indicate that nearly all of them had the opposite experience. It has been by and large and up to the last post a "good news/ things aren't as bad as they are made out " kind of post

Maybe we only got replies from the luckier members As you kind of hinted at in another thread where I remarked on us belonging to a species that is given to extremes of optimism and pessimism, the trick is to work out the reality - not always easy

pentaxuser

If momus requests, I could take the word "high" out of the thread title.

My problem has long been simply needing to politely say no to more free gear - nowhere to put it. And I mean big lab gear, really expensive stuff. I don't want to be in that business. I'm just make personal prints, and am already well equipped for that.
In that respect, any price above zero would seem too high. But that kind of opportunity probably varies quite a bit geographically. Here we had several big labs either partially or completely retire within only a decade.

Where I'm enlargers are free or next to free. Burlington Camera basement is graveyard of darkroom equipment.
All items are cheap and basement is not really visited by buyers.

I will chime in with just my local (within about an hour of Seattle) observations. Well known 4x5 capable gear has pretty high asking prices these days I spent a couple of years buying "darkroom lots" if the asking was $150 and less and then keeping the pieces of gear that I thought suited me best, and moving the rest on to other people. The last "lot" I picked up ended up being a trade for some extra power tools I wasn't using and netted me a Beseler 45mcx, Zone VI print washer, cold light head, Thomas duplex safelight, and some other bits and pieces.
I still haven't built a darkroom, and my wife and I are thinking of moving so now really isn't the time to add a "single use" room to our house. That being said, I struggle with whether or not to keep and deal with moving a big Beseler 45mcx with adjustable table and all the usual kit, or let it go and hope for another good deal in a couple of years?
As to current prices; nice printing easels have become something of a hens teeth item. I haven't seen a Saunders 16x20 for under $250 in a long time. Lens prices seem to be all over the map which holds true for camera lenses as well.

Feel free to remove any word you wish Matt.

My experience over the years is that darkroom equipment prices are quite high unless you are willing to do a lot of hanging out on online auctions. Going to craigslist or other sites besides eBay here in Tucson is a waste of time, people have very high and unrealistic prices on stuff. I just bought a 11x14 Premier easel for $17 on eBay, but it took a lot of time consuming searching there. It's a two blade model, but that's fine w/ me.

That Beseler 45mcx of yours may be a beast, but what are the chances of one coming up for sale near you 2 years from now? Might be difficult to replace.

Many of us are downsizing now, due to ageing or other (mostly financial) issues. Darkrooms cost much more in this expensive day and age (surely so here in Australia) than they did ten, twenty years ago.

I'm now in my seventies and until last year I had a huge accumulation of developing and printing gear collected over the decades, much of which was sitting and gathering dust in our second bedroom. Cartons full of enlarging paper and several boxes of mostly liquid chemistry I no longer had any use for - and I was also facing the inevitable "conclusion" we all have to in life, that with the time I had left on this planet I most probably would not get to use up. So I decided a lot of it had to go.

I did a deal with a buyer who was keen to acquire good quality equipment and sold off most of my Nikkormats and Nikkor lenses, other Nikon accessories, the aforementioned paper and chemicals, darkroom bits and pieces AND a wonderful old Leitz Focomat Ic with a Multigrade head I had bought (for a small fortune) in the 1990s from a closed prolab and used maybe all of ten times. I got back about half what I paid for the Ic, lost money on the paper and most of the darkroom things, and made a little on a few of the rarer items. No matter - the point and purpose of the exercise was to clear our second bedroom, which we did - I no longer do as much processing and printing as I did even a few years ago and my (younger) partner has no interest in the mechanics of analog photo-making. So it mostly all had to go, and it went.

I've kept what I call my 'Zen lifestyle' darkroom - an LPL 7700 with a B&W head and (too many) other accessories for it, a Jobo Duolab (I had three, whatever for? and sold two in 2020), two of my best easels (mostly Saunders which cost a small mint here in Oz and, I think, are worth every kangaroo and koala paw I paid for them), enough liquid chemicals and raw chemistry to mix what I need for a few more years, AND all my fiber base paper, which I couldn't bring myself to part with. This year I intend to use up the last of a big lot of Ilford Galerie, the original gorgeous tone Ilford top quality paper which I bought in 2000 when I had the credit rating if not the hard cash, which will likely give me all the 4x5 and occasional 5x7 prints I want for my archive. When it and the other boxes of FB are used up, that will be it for me. I've had a long lifetime of fun and a little money out of it all, but eventually it all has to finish. So it goes for everything.

A brief aside - I had a Bogen enlarger in Canada when I lived there (some time in the late iron age, ha!) and I liked working with it, bu I've never seen one in Australia. Which I think rather odd - they are far better beasts to print with than the (to me) markedly inferior Meoptas.

Darkroom gear here in Australia either costs a fortune (= Ebay inflated prices) OR gets given away gratis. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground. Twenty or more years ago when my partner first got together as a unit and we lived in Brighton (a Melbourne suburb), our council did a large garbage collection every year, and I recall many old enlargers being put out on the kerbs, including some very desirable Beseler and Omega enlargers such as I no longer see anywhere Down Under. Most of these were taken away for scrap metal recycling, a deplorable waste of valuable assets but so goes life in the real world. We all have our time and often as not the goodies we leave behind are of no interest or use to our surviving relations.

These days few camera shops bother to stock secondhand enlargers. The occasional rarity ends up on Ebay, often as not for inflated auction prices, but I look every now and then and see only clapped-out Russian or Eastern European ones, mostly Meoptas, and occasionally an ancient Durst, all on offer for ridiculous prices. Which leaves me wondering, is there truly one (or several) born every minute...

ozmoose said:

Darkroom gear here in Australia either costs a fortune (= Ebay inflated prices) OR gets given away gratis. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground.

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I have had a similar experience here in the Washington, DC area. I spent months looking for gear that wasn't exorbitantly priced or absolute junk. I was never lucky like so many of you who seem to literally trip over abandoned but decent gear strewn about sidewalks (or pavements, if you prefer) or closing community-college darkrooms.

I do recall perusing eBay and various Craigslist(s), and seeing bargains elsewhere (seems like folks in Illinois, New York State, Wisconsin (as I recall) were unloading things at a reasonable cost -- if you were willing to make the day-long trip up) but pretty close to zilch here in the "Mid-Atlantic" area.

Of course, now that I've said that, seventeen locals will advise that they spent five years trying to give away all their 4x5 equipment in pristine condition, for free. Maybe timing is everything.

Good old times and prices are gone. I have about 12 enlargers. Some of them cost me zero and none of them more than 100 euros, Focomat 2c included. I have luck, my house is overloaded and I must say STOP.

Darkroom equipment now is a little like photography, you have to take opportunities where you can find them and it either just happens quickly or takes an enormous amount of preparation. @momus the Tucson local listing on shopgoodwill.com in southern AZ has been trying to unload an Omega C-700 with dichroic head and lens for $50 for a while. Rescue it before they can't sell it and it winds up in the dumpster.

As a person who has just gotten into enlargers and photography, the experiences of you guys is not the normal way things are in the united states.

Far to many folks on the flea bay and etsy ville express, buy a used enlarger, and charge 3 to 500 for it, or they break it down into each piece and sell each piece for 250 to 300$.

MOST of the complete units, at least for beseler are commonly at the stage of "needs a refurbishment kit" and quite often require a new bellows.

Sure not the hardest of things to do, but when you get a used enlarger and then sell the base board, column, enlarger head, and sometimes the lamp housing seperately for 250$ for each piece, the cost is quite easier to just get a brand new beseler 45 and call it good