Beseler 67s questions

Zaphod2319 · Oct 29, 2018

My Beseler has a 35mm condenser bulb and a 6x7 condenser bulb. Can I enlarge 6x4.5 negatives using the 6x7 bulb?

I have read that you can add contrast by using the color settings, is there a good setting to start or just experiment? It is a color head.

How do I know what f setting to use on the lens?

Thank you for your noob patience.

Dave

webestang64 · Oct 29, 2018

You focus your negative with the enlarging lens wide open, once focused I would use F8 or F11 for printing.

And as I tell all noobs....BUY OLD PHOTO BOOKS!!!!! Cheap and plentiful.

I bought these books for $2 each.

You may be asking yourself just what type of colored light causes the contrast of a black and white print made on variable contrast paper to change. That's easy. Lots of blue light causes the print to become higher in contrast. Lots of green light causes it to become lower in contrast. When you use near-equal amounts of green and blue light to make the exposure, the print will be near normal in contrast.

If you are using a standard dichroic color enlarger, with cyan, magenta, and yellow filter dials, the yellow dial controls how much blue light will reach the enlarging paper. And, the magenta dial controls the amount of green light.

The more yellow filtration you use, the less blue light reaches the paper. The more magenta filtration, the less green light reaches the paper. Equal amounts of yellow and magenta will produce equal amounts of blue and green light. If you are using equal amounts of blue and green light and want the picture to be higher in contrast, you need to increase the amount of blue light by reducing the amount of yellow filtration. Conversely, if you want to lower the print's contrast, you need to increase the amount of green light by reducing the amount of magenta filtration.

Chucktin · Dec 17, 2018

If the OP is discribed the enlarger correctly I'd use the 6x7 bulb set up. Never heard of that before but there were Omegas (only one we'd use) that had several condenser sets to choose from. We had one with a 35mm set, 6x6 square set, and a 4x5 set.

ac12 · Dec 27, 2018

Zaphod2319 said:
My Beseler has a 35mm condenser bulb and a 6x7 condenser bulb. Can I enlarge 6x4.5 negatives using the 6x7 bulb?

I have read that you can add contrast by using the color settings, is there a good setting to start or just experiment? It is a color head.

How do I know what f setting to use on the lens?

Thank you for your noob patience.

Dave

You need to look at the enlarger again, with the manual, carefully.
The color head does not have a condenser.
If you have a condenser lens, then you have the B&W condenser head.

And what do you mean by 'condenser bulb?'
I am going to guess that you mean the 'mixing chamber' that is below the lamp and filter assembly.
If so, then just use the 6x7 mixing chamber for 6x4.5 film.

If you don't have the enlarger manual, get it.
The table of recommended color head settings for VC paper is in the manual, along with how to use the enlarger.
Ilford also has a table of recommended color head settings, some place on their site.

As @webestang64 said, go get a few old darkroom printing books, and study them. They are going to answer questions that you don't even have, but should.

Zaphod2319 · Dec 27, 2018

It is the mixing chamber.

Chucktin · Dec 27, 2018

Basic physics - for all intents and purposes when you're doing optics and a light source your dealing with a "cone" of light. So your negative must fit comfortably inside the light cone to get _even_ coverage (no hot spots, no fall off) and the lenses in the system must image a similar cone in order to "see" the total negative corner-to-corner. So for a 6x4.5 neg you need an 6x6 lens about 75 or 80 mm to throw a proper sized image. Above the neg you need only eyeball the coverage to be sure the entire surface has adequate light falling on it.
There have been any number of attempts to combine the brightness of a condenser enlarger (B&W) and a diffuser enlarger (VC Paper and Color negs) mostly they we're just gadgets and fads that fell out of favour quickly. The closest to what the OP is describing is an enlarger with a changeable diffusion chamber. They "sort of" condensed the light down from 4x5 size to 6x6 (2 1/4) and we hardly ever put in the 35 mm chamber because it was a _lot_ of effort for very little gain.