Beseler Enlarger 23C II Advice

[PetPhoto]

As the enlarging world seems to be dying down via closeout on most of the dark room supplier sites, it may be a good time to get what i can whilst i still can.

I have the glassless 6x45 negative carrier, but have to ask,,, nothing is stopping me from getting the 6x0 carrier with anti newton glass,, other than the issue of needing to make a nest to cradle smaller size negatives in the middle.
The person i bought an omega 4x5 glass carrier from, used electrical tape to make a nice masked area for 35mm negatives..

Is there any benefit to getting a "correctly sized" negative carrier for 35mm and 645 formats, and than shelling out money to get anti newton glass upgrads from KHB in canada versus simply spilling out for the 6x9 with anti newton glass installed?

 

[DownUnder]

Being me, I would buy both. As you say, snare them while you still can.

As I've done with accessories for my LPL 7700 color head 6x7. Over the past twenty year I've picked up every small accessory for this beaut babe that I could find. All the better as almost all negative holders made by LPL easily fit every enlarger they made.

Buy the adjustable negative holder if you can find one. They aren't easy to come by. I believe they all came equipped with original LPL anti Newton glass. Well worth looking out for.

Nice to know somebody is getting interested in darkroom work again. Most of us have largely given it away now, due to the high cost of everything to do with our playing in the dark. Here in Australia, safelight globes now cost almost ten times what they were going for in 2004 when I bought six - I still have them all, so I'm right, as we say here.

 

[Cascadilla]

If you use both formats regularly, then getting both carriers make sense since most tapes will leave a residue that will be hard to get off if it is on for very long. My first enlarger had a glass carrier and it was a pain in the neck to keep the glass clean enough to avoid spots on my prints. Since then with the other enlargers that I have worked with I have always used glassless negative carriers. Even with condensor heads and 11 x 14 prints I haven't had a problem with unsharp corners. Then last two enlargers that I have had have both had cold light heads which finessed the problem of negatives getting hot and popping in the center that some condensor enlargers have. If you are only doing B&W printing, cold light will work well. For color, not so much.

 

[PetPhoto]

Im a flutter in 35mm cameras.. 1 vivitar K mounts.. one that actually has a working shutter, 2 fully restored and diode converted canon FtB n .. a leica m3 with ears, and a voightlander vitomatic II i dont really use much, but really works with xp2 super. A restored and repaired Ricoh TLS 401

Own a maimya 645 1000s medium format. Havent used in too long. Gots to check battery this weekend.

a ricoh diacord G 6x6

An omega view 45D.

 

[Godfrey]

It has been many, many years since I printed in a wet lab. My print process from film has been hybridized to scanning the film, image processing, and inkjet printer since the middle 1990s, although to be sure decent printers, ink, and paper availability for this process really didn't begin until about 2004 or so.

That said, I do deal with the mask issue quite a bit since I have film formats from 8x11 mm to 6x9 cm that I work with. I prefer to buy (or make) dedicated masks for my scanning rig as I find it just makes the process much easier to deal with and much more consistent. This is directly analogous to getting the right enlarger masks, based on my prior experience in the darkroom oh so long ago.

Should anyone want them, I have Beseler 23C masks for 6x6, 24x36, and 8x11 formats sitting unused here. Free for the asking .. take one, get all three. Just send me a direct message and they're yours, first come first served, for the cost of shipping. 🙂

G