Aurore Lynch
(K=1687) - Comment Date 4/15/2003
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When I got my first enlarger, I used Ebay. Some are wary about the site but I did it a little differently than most. On the main page, choose the 'Browse' tab. A tab will appear underneath it called 'Regions'. Choose the area you're in and do your search. When you find what you need not only will you be able to skip high shipping costs by picking it up yourself but you will also be able to SEE what you're buying before you buy it. Of course, check with the seller before making your bid, I've yet to have anyone refuse a pay/pick-up in person. Good luck.
Aurore
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Jim Vanson
(K=325) - Comment Date 5/7/2003
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You realize a 5x7 enlarger is going to be much harder to find then a 4x5 . There is no way I'd use such a beast as my only enlarger either...I'd get a 4x5 with a variable contrast head. So try So try Midwest Photographic Exchange http://www.mpex.com/ or Badger http://www.badgergraphic.com (who don't sell used darkroom gear but always have their ear to the ground as far as whom is selling what).
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Charles Morris
(K=5969) - Comment Date 5/7/2003
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A lot of large format photographers invest in or build a copy stand and mount their camera in the stand with a light source in the back in place of a film holder. Aristo and Federal used to make this type of cold light head. for all iknow they still do. the downside of most of them was that they had little or no provision for filtration above the negative. So you had to either find CC filters that fit your camera lens or fabricate some kind of holder below the lens. this was not difficult, it just made dust and scratch control more critical.
these days it's probably simpler to just do contact prints for large format films, and if you need a big/small print, a good quality flatbed scanner with a large transparent media adaptor is cheaper than the enlarger and you take the resulting file on CD to your local fuji frontier printer. before i got the correct negative carrier for my enlarge i was using a cheap $130 scanner to scan my negatives and then taking those to the local wal-mart and getting 8x10 prints made for about $1 each. i could not buy the materials to print color for that.
2cents@large
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