Testo: Che cosa e' un ingranditore e come funziona (ENG)
ENG
What isan enlarger and how it works?
Hello everyone and welcome back
to my channel,
Today I want to make a video about the basic information that you need to know about an enlarger in order, maybe, to start thinking about which one to buy.
The enlarger is this element, the one next to me. Practically, it is that tool that we use to transfer our photo from the film to the print in darkrooms.
In particular, for whoever is wondering, this one is a Leitz focomat 1C, and it is dedicated only for the small format of 35mm. It's condensed light type and therefore can be used only and exclusively for black and white prints.
How does the enlarger work?
The enlarger works in the same way as a camera.
We have the sun illuminating an object, the object sends back to us a radiation of light, and therefore we perceive the object. We perceive the color, the finish, and whatever is going to happen thought these radiations.
When the object sends this light back to us, the light passes through the camera, after we pen the shutter of the camera and record our image/ radiation on the film that we have
placed here on the back of the camera. Then we take the film out of the camera, develop it and have our photograph.
The enlarger works in the exactly same way. What I am used to say is that printing an analog photograph in darkroom, is the same as re-taking the photo itself ... because we have to study the light exposure times, we have a lens with diaphragms, and the paper itself has an ISO sensitivity, which is generally not declared, but we know that every emulsion has
a sensitivity value. Therefore, in practice, we are going to recreate our exposure triangle, and re-taken the photo.
So, let's see the various parts for a moment.
First of all, we have a light source, which is a light bulb And the light emanating from this
bulb is directed, in this case by the ampoule. It directs the light downwards.
Immediately afterwards we find the negative's place, as you can see, the negative is hosted by a mask.
And then, the ray of light continues to go down, until it arrives in this ring, in which we would mount our lens.
Attention because in general the lenses for the enlarger are specific for enlargers and are not
the same as the ones for camera.
So once light passes throught the lens and the red filter. We will make sure there is a red filter before the paper to be able to position the card in the right position.
The red filter works exactly like the red lights of darkrooms, so it prevents the white light coming from the bulb go to the paper and wrongly impressing the paper.
So we make sure there is a red filter and put your paper in the right position.
Then, you have to remove the red filter, impress it as long as necessary, and move the process to the wet phase with trays to get your final print result.
This is a photo that, okay, would have had to climb even more in this area, however this is a test and in fact, as you can see, I use it as a sample for the size of the format.
And that's pretty much the actions with any enlarger.
Now, let's see how to choose a enlarger ...
It depends on the formats on which we usually work. This one for example is valid only
for the 35mm and is therefore not usable for the medium format, even worse for the large format.
So think about your pictures and what format you would like to to print, and look for a suitable enlarger.
Keep in mind that changing the format, such as going from a small to a medium format, means that the lens must also change as well, because it goes from 50 to 75-80mm of lens and the condenser for directing the light must also change.
So the first thing is the format that the enlarger allows us to print.
Then another thing that you usually check is contrast. If you want a situation like this one. This is a very old enlarger about from 30s. At that time, there were only fixed contrast printing papers and therefore we didn't need to go to select the wavelength frequencies that interested us to obtain a contrast.
So in order to use this enlarger with multigrade papers which are the most common paper type today, you need to use contrast filters.
And these are simply interposed, I take a random one, they must be interposed between the light source and the negative.
Then if you would like there are some filters which get their position under the lens, but I've never used them, so I can't tell you more. I've always been comfortable with these ones.
So you can choose or a solution like this one, where you need also some contrast filters,
or, on the other hand, especially if you want to work also with color, there are color heads, and these filters are included in the upper part of the enlarger with 3 levers. Sorry I do not have a color head here to show you the system, but the concept is that you have three levers and filters, cyan, magenta and yellow, and working through these filters for colours, you can control the contrast even in black and white prints.
So this is the second point to analyse.
The third point is which type of light do you want. A condenser enlarger or a diffuser enlarger?
Diffuser enlarger can be used for both systems, black and white or colours.
Condenser Enlarger can be used only with black and white prints and with colours prints.
To Sum up,
let's have a look about the second hand market, see what you found and analysed this three point to choose your lovely enlarger.
I hope this video helps you and see you in the next video
Ciao.
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