The latest addition to the family

Dave Colangelo · Aug 29, 2018

Scored this bad boy from a local lab that was getting rid of it. Its a Leitz Focomat IIc fairly early era. Its a pretty neat unit and quite different from the other enlargers I have. It has an interesting dual lens setup, a 100mm and a 60mm both on a sliding plate. I need to get a trigger cable to fix it but once connected, moving the sliding lens plate actuates the runner on the auto focus mechanism to change tracks, each of which can be calibrated individually for the lenses. It also has a neat bracket for adjusting base height to compensate for the easel. The negative holder is a dual glass plate style which really helps prevent negative flex. Hands down the build quality on this is well above anything I have come across yet including my other two letiz focomat's which are 35mm only. Fired it up this evening and the initial prints are looking pretty darn good.

The only down side, if you can even call it that, is that I cant print 4x5 with it.

Derrel · Aug 29, 2018

Ohhhh, memories!!! I printed many of my photos using one of multiple Focomat IIc models at what is now Western Oregon University, back in the early 1980's. This is a NICE enlarger! very crisp and contrasty lighting/condenser system...shows dust on the negatives pretty well...the automatic focusing is sweet! We had a very nice darkroom there in the Fine Arts department...this is an excellent enlarger!

Dave Colangelo · Aug 29, 2018

@Derrel Im pretty pumped about it its in really nice condition, I was printing this evening but i think my developer has gone bad. Its turned a nice tea color which some say is ok and others say its skunked. It was developing the prints fine but my development times and exposure times were super short. Even stepped pretty far down I was seeing exposure times below 10 seconds and development times under a minute (I usually develop for 1:30). I need to explore some air free storage options as I don't print as often as I should.

The lens was a bit loose but some grease on the threads made it run smooth and tighten up a bit. I did a quick clean up to get it running but i may need to do some deeper disassembly and re-lubricate some of the parts.

webestang64 · Aug 30, 2018

I used one of those at a lab I worked at in the late 80's. Super nice enlarger.

Derrel · Aug 31, 2018

Were you using the Leica enlarger? As I recall, the exposure times on the ones we had a Western were pretty short. I, myself, do not like an under-10-second enlargement time...too brief...too difficult to dodge and burn...too demanding...I prefer to pre-heat the negative until it "pops!", and to then make a longer, like 20-second, exposure time at f/8 or so.

How long the exposure time is depends too on the density of the negatives...some people have pretty thick negs, others strive for a thinner, more-delicate negative.

If the development time is under a minute--you've way over-exposed the print under the enlarger...I agree with 90 seconds,at least, as the right developing time...less time is not good.

I dunno...sounds like the enlarger you were using needs a dimmer light source.

Dave Colangelo · Sep 2, 2018

@Derrel I was using the leica, I did some reading and here are some of my conclusions, there is still a lot more experimenting to do.

The first thing I did was check the light source. The enlarger has a 150W bulb which i was at first suspicious of but after consulting the manual it appears to be the proper bulb. Ive dropped a few 75W bulbs in my cart, next time i place an order for film etc they will come my way.

I did not know about thin negatives before digging into this and that was for sure an issue on at least one print I made. some of the other negatives were not that thin but did not yield times above 30 seconds so I may need to under expose a bit. Pretty much all of the negatives I have scan really well but that seems potentially unrelated.

This enlarger has a double glass plate negative holder so there is no pop flex when it heats up (unless the pop is something else that I dont know about).

The last variable is the chemistry. The Multigrade I have is somewhat old and likely should be replaced. However The effect seems to be that it processes faster. I would think that expired developer would work slower (or not at all) rather than faster but I could be wrong on this.