Intrepid enlarger?

[joe bosak]

Looks like it's been around a few years (I saw on another thread that there was a kickstarter back in 2021) but I just came across this:

Intrepid Compact Enlarger (35mm & 120)

Anyone tried using it for negative scanning? There's a video on the site demonstrating such use. It seems a nice compact solution capable of covering 35mm up to 6x9. There's even a 4x5 version.

The way it's demonstrated it basically gives you negative holders and a backlight with some colour control (they use Negative Lab Pro in the video), so maybe £280 is a lot to pay for that.

 

[mdarnton]

As an enlarger it looks great. As a scanner it seems like a lot less: just an expensive light source with unnecessary features when the most important part of camera scanning is the camera and what's on it--bellows, lens, whatever.

For that I'm currently using a Nikon PB-5 bellows and slide/film stage with an EL-Nikkor 75/4 lens (the best lens I tested for this job, followed by EL-Nikkor 63/2.8 and Micro-Nikkor 50/3.5 which are both pretty good) and a small inexpensive LED movie light--a lot less expensive than the enlarger, around $200 plus camera and more stable and easier to use. Now with mirrorless cameras and the appropriate adapters you can hang that rig on just about anything.

(Check my flickr for examples of how well this combo works).