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Re: [OM] Warped with no sense of humor

Subject: Re: [OM] Warped with no sense of humor
From: Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:21:33 -0600
>
> I just remembered that I bought and installed a Heat Absorbing Glass into
> my
> Beseler color enlarger head because I was having trouble with heat at
> first.
> That was so long ago, I have not printed in the darkroom in 8 years! I had
> totally forgotten when I wrote my earlier response to you. The
> Heat-absorbing glass did take care of the problem, maybe you could get that
> for your enlarger and can keep using non-glass carriers?


Three years ago, I tore mine apart for maintenance purposes and found that
it has a two-stage heat-absorbtion/reflection system in it.  The B&W head
has a heat-absorbing glass plate in it too, but film would warp in seconds
in that thing no matter what.  I threw multiple layers of diffusion material
in the lamp housing (gell diffusers for stage lights) which eventually
cooled things down enough. What really helped was placing an IR cut filter
in the housing, but light is light and anything dark will convert light
energy into heat energy

The bulbs used in my color enlarger (Omega) is a reflectored haligon bulb.
The reflector is actually IR transparant to allow the IR energy to pass
through to the backside into the cooling area of the enlarger. This helps,
but 1/2 of the heat energy is still going forwards and must be
reflected/absorbed by a glass plate in the bulb chamber.  In the Omega, the
mixing chamber contains another mirror which is also IR transparant, but not
to the same degree as the bulb's reflector.

Heat is a big problem with enlargers. What most people don't realize is that
the enlarger lens has to put up with a lot of localized temperature
intensity. Using a camera lens, for example, in an enlarger is not a good
thing and they will usually break or elements will separate.

To some, this may sound like a lot of hooey to go through and the digital
darkroom is much easier to deal with.  Yes and no. The darkroom, once setup
and calibrated, is usually a pretty fast and easy environment to work in.
The digital darkroom is no different.

Speaking of comparative costs.  I'm working on the library project which is
resulting in 60 11x14 archival B&W fiber-glossy prints. Using the best of
the best in materials, including the film and developing, my total costs are
under $300 for the entire project. Inotherwords, $5 per print. If I was to
buy cameras and darkroom equipment for this project (which I already own,
but if I didn't), I could have done it all for under $1200. So, for $1500 I
can produce world-class B&W prints of a rather substantial quantity. 60
11x14 archival B&W prints on highest-quality paper!!!  Just how much would
this have cost me to do with digital?  Digital probably would be a whole lot
less time consuming, though.

AG
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