Aristo VCL4500 vs Zone VI VC on Beseler 45 MXT

I am setting up a Beseler 45MXT enlarger in my darkroom. As yet I

have not settled on the light source for this enlarger. I plan to

work with variable contrast materials so I am looking for opinions,

good or bad, on the Aristo VCL 4500 and the Zone VI Variable

Contrast cold light from Calumet.

 

I have spoken with the folks at Aristo and their V54 bulb light

sources won�t fit a Beseler without some serious modifications to

add a filter drawer. That is beyond my meager talents, so it looks

like it�s gonna be one of the two choices mentioned.

 

I�m new to variable contrast work, so let me know what you think.

 

Any input is welcome.

 

Tommy Mitchell

I've worked with the VCL4500 for several years now and I'm very satisfied. I'm using it on that exact model Beseler.

I've been using the VCL 4500 with a Beseler MXT since 1994. I've been very pleased with that combination. I get a contrast range with Kodak Polymax Fine Art paper that is the equivalent of graded papers .5 to 4.8. I probably could have gotten to a full grade 5 equivalent or even higher but didn't carry the test that far since I never print at that high a contrast anyhow. My only complaint is that it doesn't come with a hole pre-drilled for use with a compensating timer. As was discussed in another thread here recently, putting your new $1000 light source in a vise and drilling a hole into it is a little scary.

Brian,

 

Are you using a compensating timer with your VCL 4500? Are there any guidelines about placement of the light sensor? How did you do it?

 

In another post I read that there some articles in View Camera Magazine about putting sensors in non predrilled light sources. Does anybody know which issues have these references?

 

Tommy

Many people use the round can type Aristo head with a V54 tube but with no filter drawer. Just lay the filter on top of the negative carrier. Sounds like it would not work but it does. Evidently there is enough space maintained between the filter and the neg to keep dust on the filter out of focus. Cut a small window mat spacer if want to.

 

I have the VCL4500. Its LED dial scale is callibrated from 0 to 5 but those numbers bear no relation to VC filter grades. You have to calibrate (for each paper you use) to find which LED number yields which paper grade. Anchell's book goes into that. Maybe all two tube VC heads have that problem, I don't know.

Or you can just use a below the lens filter...I've used an MXT with a D2H like this for years. Aristo makes (or made) another cold head, that was an oversized blue tube with a filter drawer, it had one dimmer and a control for full blue, or dimmed. I had one of these and had a green tube put in it eventually, so it's sorta like a VCL4500 now. After a year or two, I finally got a Metrolux (more for the closed-loop sensitometery really, the VCL is a pretty stable coldlight)--and just pretty much took the housing apart--noted where the circuit board is and the tubes, and drilled it carefully. It's like aluminum or some kind of soft metal, and is pretty thin. You feed the probe through this, and there's a sort of plastic cap that acts as stress relief. You just pop that in there and you're done--until it takes you a couple of days of trial & error to get the probe aimed right & the thing calibrated. You have to experiment with the sensor placement a bit, because it's designed for a one-lamp source. The green & blue tubes effect it differently--so you need to experiment with both placement and the calibration of the Lux settings, or else your timer will run faster or slower depending on the VC setting or which tube is on. On my VCL, the blue tube is variable, the green stays constant. I can't remember which tube I put the sensor on, but there's an eye to it, and I aimed this sorta out into the housing. The metrolux has two channels, I have mine set up to run the VC settings on the first channel, and the blue tube only on the second. Because if I go to blue only, on the "Lux 1" channel, the timer runs too fast. So, I calibrated it to a more comfortable speed...probably doesn't make sense (?) but just as the VCL LED readout doesn't correspond to any actual grades, the timer doesn't actually run in seconds...once you get used to it, it makes sense.

Yes, I use the Metrolux II compensating timer. The VCL 4500 head comes with instructions for attaching the sensors to the two lights. That part is easy to do, it's the drilling of the hole to get the sensors into the head that's a little scary. However, I did it and I'm definitely not Mr. Goodwrench. I don't know about any article in View Camera magazine, perhaps there was one but if so I don't remember it.

<p>Should the hole be drilled behind the light bulbs and on the side of the motherboard/controller or should it be drilled through the top and place over the of the motherboard/controller?</p>