Diffusion Head vs Cold Light for B&W Prints?

Decades ago when I was doing B&W printing in my darkroom, I toyed with the idea of getting an Aristo cold light head for my Beseler 23CII. Never happened. However, I did get a Leitz Focomat V35 color enlarger and use it without filtration for printing on graded B&W Ilford Galerie paper. See: Leitz Focomat V35

 

As I remember, I liked the Focomat prints better than the Beseler condenser head prints.

 

I'm getting close to having a darkroom again, and I was wondering if my Beseler 23CIII enlarger with Dichroic color head would compare with the Aristo cold light.

 

Anyone do any tests?

 

Thanks for any responses.

The Leitz heads are not really like anything else on the market-they are something of a cross between a diffusion head and a condenser head.

 

I do all my 35mm printing on a Focomat V35 and I love the results I get from it. Unless you're really dedicated, graded paper is a bit impractical these days and I'd suggest multigrade as a matter of convenience. Focomat V35s seem uncommon with anything other than a color head, and that's quite a useful feature for B&W printing.

 

I like the condenser head on my Beseler. As a general rule of thumb, a condenser will print negatives about 1 grade higher than a diffusion head. Of course, some of that depends on preference-I tend toward liking a bit more contrast in my prints, but then it's also negative specific.

 

In general, I don't think you can go wrong with using a diffusion head. It's a lot easier to add back contrast than take it away, and they are more tolerant of dust and other issues on your negatives. If your darkroom isn't a clean room, that can be a big deal(although printing is a LOT more tolerant of dust than scanning).

A dichroic head with diffuser box should give virtually identical results to a cold-cathode head. They're both fully diffuse light sources.

 

The only proviso would be if vari-grade paper is used. A cold-cathode head will have a bluer light with more UV output, and the filtration would need to be quite different from a tungsten or halogen powered diffuser head.

Decades ago when I was doing B&W printing in my darkroom, I toyed with the idea of getting an Aristo cold light head for my Beseler 23CII. Never happened. However, I did get a Leitz Focomat V35 color enlarger and use it without filtration for printing on graded B&W Ilford Galerie paper. See: Leitz Focomat V35

 

As I remember, I liked the Focomat prints better than the Beseler condenser head prints.

 

I'm getting close to having a darkroom again, and I was wondering if my Beseler 23CIII enlarger with Dichroic color head would compare with the Aristo cold light.

 

Anyone do any tests?

 

Thanks for any responses.

 

What rodeo joe said is correct and good guidance.

 

Adjust your variable contrast filtration according to the appearance of your prints. This is what matters.

I did some research on the Focomat V35, and it seems Leica changed the bulb in the enlarger. The earlier ones seemingly have a harder-to-find bulb, so you have to be careful when buying one.

 

Sorry I'm late responding, but I'm having a medical problem right now, so I'm busy taking care of that.

 

Thanks for the replies so far.

Decades ago when I was doing B&W printing in my darkroom, I toyed with the idea of getting an Aristo cold light head for my Beseler 23CII. Never happened. However, I did get a Leitz Focomat V35 color enlarger and use it without filtration for printing on graded B&W Ilford Galerie paper. See: Leitz Focomat V35

 

As I remember, I liked the Focomat prints better than the Beseler condenser head prints.

 

I'm getting close to having a darkroom again, and I was wondering if my Beseler 23CIII enlarger with Dichroic color head would compare with the Aristo cold light.

 

Anyone do any tests?

 

Thanks for any responses.

What do you mean compare.....to a machine you used "Decades Ago".....with graded paper.? You will not be using graded paper now.....

Guys with a Condenser Head switch to Cold Light, guys with Cold Light switch to a "typical" Diffusion, and so on and so forth. Any decent machine is capable of making decent prints.

I would not hesitate to buy a 23C that was in good shape. If it needs a power supply, make sure the unit comes with a functioning PS, or make sure you can Buy/Build one.

There ARE times when a standard head is handy to have, but for most B&W printing is is very convenient to have a color head with the knobs. :)

Good Luck with your forthcoming darkroom. It is a magical place.

What do you mean compare.....to a machine you used "Decades Ago".....with graded paper.? You will not be using graded paper now......

 

As long as Ilford keeps making graded Galerie paper, I will. I'll use variable contrast paper ONLY when I can't get Galerie any longer.

 

By the way, I have a Beseler 23CIII with the dichroic color head.

I switched my Beseler 23C from condenser to Aristo cold light in 1981 and it made a huge difference. Suddenly I was able to make better prints than I had ever made before, and with less effort. I've never compared my results with prints made with a dichroic head, but I think any diffusion source will yield the same results.

 

Although it's true that a condenser head adds contrast, the problem is that the contrast isn't uniform -- it's mostly in the highlights. You can't fully compensate by changing paper grades. You can partly compensate by reducing the film's developing time, but then you lose film speed and shadow detail. To prove the difference, compare a contact print and an enlargement of the same negative made on the same grade paper. The diffusion prints will match; the condenser prints won't. The contact print will show more highlight detail than the condenser enlargement, no matter how the film is developed. Contact prints are the benchmark because the light source doesn't matter.

If you have tried the Heiland LED cold light source you do not want anything else anymore:

Heiland LED module | LEICA

Except the V35 is limited to the inherently crippled 35mm format, and this thread is about heads for a Beseler 23ciii - supposedly.

 

Shame that affordable tri-colour LED modules weren't around 30 years ago when wet colour printing was an economical proposition.

Over then years I've had the opportunity to use pretty much every enlarger made, in both home darkroom, fine art commercial and photo journalism roles.

I started with condensers as a newb, bought a 23Cii, and thought it was the greatest thing ever. Well, for 35mm....with MF I never could get a uniform light plane on a 23c.

I then worked for a newspaper, and veterans with 30years of press experience and making their own prints were producing prints made from 35mm orders of magnitude sharper than I was getting with my 23C, and hen you push Tri-X to 3200 you need every molecule of detail. Turns out they were using Focomat V35s. I could not match the sharpness and edge detail with my 23C using a 50mm Componon S lens, which wasn't exactly a dog. The problem as I found was mostly thermal. Straight Condensers like a 23C focus incandescent light on the neg stage including all the heat they generate, which causes the neg to bounce a few seconds after you hit it with light. Some more fiddling and I designed a multi stage thermal filter and got me kinda close to the V35s. I then moved to the fine art side, and fine art B&W vets with 30 years of experience once again smoked my 23C prints. These guys had all moved from cold cathode to commercial dichroics, and the difference in high key tonal ranges was astonishing compared to Condensers. Dichroics then used halogen light sources, which you would think cause lots of neg popping, but the mixing box absorbs a lot of the heat and little seems to make to the lens stage. Plus, with variable contrast paper (I hate it but there's always Polyfiber and RC fans out there) gave any intermediate grade you wanted by simply adjusting magenta. I added a piece of 1/8 milk plexi above the neg stage in my 23C and got nearly identical results as the dichros.

 

I know it's subjective, but as I evolved I preferred Dichros / milk plexi modified condensers -vs- straight condensers, especially for MF / LF. The problem is all the good fiber papers like Agfa Portiga and densitometer killing Dmax are long gone. Graded Ilfobrom is ok, but once again the trick is to use devlopers other than Ilford's weak lot to get full density range out of it (Dektol to the rescue). Graded fiber is better than RC, but not by much.

I prefer condenser enlargers (you learn to get pretty good w/ a spotting brush), and like Scott, found that some milk plexi acts as a fine heat shield and also diffuses the light nicely. I was going to do this w/ the 23C I was recently gifted, but will probably look for one of the old Federal enlargers. I had a condenser model years ago that gave me excellent prints.

 

You have to wonder if some of the excellent results from the Focomat enlarger was due to the Leitz lens on it.

You have to wonder if some of the excellent results from the Focomat enlarger was due to the Leitz lens on it.

 

Mine has an El-Nikkor.

 

The V35 is easily the sturdiest enlarger I've ever used, and the design goes to great lengths to keep it absolutely parallel to the baseboard regardless of the height. I suspect that may have as much as anything to do with the good results folks get from them regardless of the type of lens mounted.

You can get about 90% of the advantage of a cold light head with flashed opal glass in a condenser enlarger. I have had an Omega D2V since 1971. I always found condenser heads to be counterproductive to making wide tonal range prints, and before I could afford a cold light head, I put a piece of flashed opal glass under the condensers so that the light was diffused as it reached the negative. This gave me the ability to make much longer tonal scale negatives for printing. The longer scale negatives gave better shadow separation while preserving the highlights. If you are using variable contrast paper, the standard light source with the opal glass gives much better contrast control. For the past 25 years, I have used a Minolta color head that uses flash tubes and a diffusion chamber. It is an additive color head (RGB), so you have individual control over blue and green light giving infinite contrast control with variable contrast paper.