Valoy II bulb

[john battaglia]

Hey all, just recently purchased a valoy II. I need to find a good replacement bulb powerful enough to make an 11x14 print with. rumor has it that they don't make the short neck bulbs anymore and I am in for a little bit of a problem, please direct me in the right direction, nothing worse than uneven illumination in an enlarger!

 

[john battaglia]

My research has led me to believe that the common ph211 may be what I will be using. Any one have any info on that?

 

[ZorkiKat]

The dome shaped Valoy lamp head plus the adjustable lamp position should not give you any illumination problem from the use of odd-shaped bulbs. The standard pear-shaped 211 is indeed the perfect lamp, but a bell shaped bulb of another type should work as well.

The 211 is shaped like an ordinary household lamp, and is 75W. Household lamps don't have the proper opal finish to prevent the filament from showing up as a bright hot spot on the projected image. They also don't burn as brightly as a real enlarger lamp. However, I have used ordinary household lamps in other enlargers, and results varied from acceptable (toy enlargers) to outright uneven.

Seventy-five watts is just about what the enlarger would use. Anything higher may cause excessive heat to build up, at a rate faster than the enlarger's heat exchange system (read: the fins and vents around the head) can work with. This wattage should be bright enough to allow you to print to 11X14 at manageable printing exposure times. Dense negatives may require longer printing, but normal ones with the lens set at f/8 should give you exposures of around 20 sec or so on a typical bromide paper.

 

[jmcd]

I use a 75 watt ph-211 in my Valoy II, an the printing time is plenty fast for me with 8x10 prints, and so fast with 5x7 that I have to use a gel to hold back some light—should work fine for 11x14. However, I do get uneven illumination, resulting in slight lightening in the print's corners. My remedy is to burn the corners for 1/2 the exposure. I do this by dodging light from the center of the print with a oval shaped opaque piece of cardboard, about 3" x 5" on the x/y axes, bobbing it up and down gently. It sounds cumbersome but its not, and the results are very good. I think the short-neck bulbs would solve the problem, but they seem to be unobtainable.

 

[jmcd]

short neck and modern
http://glennview.com/jpgs/leitz/valoy2/big_13.jpg

 

[jmcd]

Notes from Glennview about the Valoy II, bulbs, and a solution
http://www.glennview.com/leitz.htm

 

[jmcd]

"I have a 1C and I think the short neck may be a better bulb for the 1C's chamber ?"

I think your 1C should be able to adjust its height to allow for different length bulbs, so you should be able to get even illumination with the modern bulb.

 

[Edward C. Zimmermann]

I just checked a few of my 220v opal enlarging bulbs: an original made by Osram for Leitz 75w bulb from no later than the late 1950s (marked Leitz with a old style script logo and a line in German saying the bulbs is for enlargers), a Narva 75w bulb (probably from the 1970s if not older) and a "more modern" Phillips 250w bulb. They are all the same (more or less) length. The globe of the Narva is a bit larger and the surface of the Opal is also a bit different but they are all essentially "the same" basic design.