Enlarger heads for B/W printing..?

[stevewestern]

So, if I buy an enlarger to print B/W only, do I need a colour head with filters or a condenser head, and why ?
As I remember, a condenser head gives a harsher light, better suited to B/W, and a colour head gives a softer light, lowering contrast.
Am I correct, or am I missing something ?
I do want to be able to print quality images, so want to get the right stuff...
Thanks for any help !
Steve

 

[Steep]

Go for the colour enlarger and use Ilford Multigrade paper, that way you can use the built in filtering on the head to adjust the contrast of the paper.

I used to own a Meopta Opemus 6, Meopta are/were czech made and very good kit. One thing to note however, enlargers rarely come with a lens, you need to buy seperately.

 

[CT]

Just to clear up any confusion here Steve, there are two ways of getting even illumination of a negative in an enlarger..

A diffuser head, which normally just uses diffusing glass to spread the light and often gives a hot spot in the centre with light fall off at the corners.

A condenser head with two plano convex condensers. (imagine a glass ball cut in half) This gives by far the most even spread of light, and whilst it's also more intense, this cuts down on your exposure times on the enlarger baseboard.

I really don't see the point in buying an expensive colour head with the built in filtering you're never going to use if you only do B&W. Far more important is the enlarger lens which needs to be of similar quality to your camera lenses, or sharpness will suffer - get a good one!

Don't even think about colour processing unless you're well minted. Yes - it's interesting, but it's also damned expensive and very time consuming. I did home colour processing for a while with a Durst coldhead colour enlarger. Once the prints were exposed, they were processed in a drum rotated by hand. Assuming everything went well and there were no problems (which there always were) a print took 10 minutes from exposure to final wash. Imagine the time it would take to process just 36 wedding exposures!!

Whatever the pro labs charge for your colour printing - it's cheap compared to doing it yourself, and maintaining temperatures in a home setup is well nigh impossible. You don't even want to know about dust problems.

 

[dazzajl]

....and just in case you were wondering whether CT was saying do or don't get into colour printing..... DONT!

Apart from all of CT's very good reasons, it's just really dull. For the most part a colour print is either right or it's wrong. There is none of the fabulous expresiveness of B&W printing.

As for whether to get a colour head or not. Darkroom kit seems to be so cheap these days that you may get one for a great price. If you do have one, it saves using the filter gels you get to change the contrast of multigrade paper.

Once you get into printing though, there are some really nice art papers to use too which are set contrast grade anyway.

 

[stevewestern]

Thanks everyone !
I had looked at some S/H enlargers, and colour heads were cheaper than B/W condenser type, which confused me !
I did once try cibachrome processing, and never again - it is B/W for me, or a lab for colour.
Now, I have grand ideas for printing onto fancy paper, and seem to remember that multigrade was rather poorly thought if in the old days, so had not even thought of using it, but it seems that maybe I should rethink.

I am looking at a lpl770 enlarger, but have no idea what is or isn't a good lens - any ideas what to look for - I am guessing that for 6x6 or 6x7 negatives, an 80mm is about right, but what makes etc..?
Again, thanks for the help so far...

 

[CT]

80mm would be about right for medium format Steve. I'd say go for Schneider or Rodenstock, although you can get good ones from Nikon and Leitz.

Bear in mind the larger the aperture, the more money, but it's only an advantage in a brighter image for focusing - you'd still stop down a few stops for the actual exposure.

 

[Steep]

Schneider lenses were considered good back in my day.

Re the paper, use multigrade as our working paper and buy/keep better or more specialised paper for shots you think deserve it. I don't know if it's still available but I used to love Seagull paper, it had some lovely tones.