LPL C7700 enlarger - DSLR attachment for use as a copy stand?

[Stephen Lloyd]

The odds of me ever using my old enlarger again as astronomical. Rather than Ebay or give away I am keen to try using it as a copy stand. I have a Nikon D850 which I know comes with slide duplication attachments for 60mm macro lenses - which I'm also keen to try as my old Coolscan fluctuates between dying, dead and almost dead at will, despite having it in at Nikon. Some things are just old and start to fail beyond repair. I also have a 105mm macro, not it's shorter sibling, which is a lens I like a lot so no plans to change that. Converting my enlarger to a copy stand and using a daylight lightbox below it has many attractions - if I can do it and if it works well of course. Has anyone done this - comments on what may be needed, or pros/cons from experience?

[spacecadet]

There a number of threads on here about slide and neg copying in general, but there's this

http://store.khbphotografix.com/Copy-Camera-Adapter-for-LPL-7700-670XL-Enlargers.html

if pricey- it may be cheaper just to buy a used copystand of any make.

I went the Illumitran route. There are always a few on ebay.

[Harry Harrison]

There are some very long threads on the practice of slide copying, this one is I think the most recent (warning - it's quite long).

 

https://discussion.alamy.com/topic/12518-canon-slide-copying-set-up/?tab=comments#comment-233376

 

I don't know if you can get a camera attachment for your enlarger, or if you can adapt it yourself, but if you can then I would hang on to it and do so since copying stands are fairly pricey. I use my Durst M605 like that but the accessory SIRIOCAM arm that I use sometimes fetches £100 on ebay.

 

However if you are only going to copy 35mm then the Nikon ES-1 (slides only) or ES-2 (slides and negative strips) may be the way to go and in that case you don't need a copying stand, just a tripod and a suitable light source, the 'ES' adapter is mounted to the lens so can be pointed anywhere, this arrangement is also very good for minimizing/eliminating camera shake.

 

I have the ES-1 though actually I use a Bowens Illumitran and a high quality enlarger lens which I find slightly easier.

Edited January 10, 2021 by Harry Harrison

[spacecadet]

9 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

this one is I think the most recent

You haven't quoted the link.

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by spacecadet

[spacecadet]

14 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

I use a Bowens Illumitran and a high quality enlarger lens which I find slightly easier.

Quite.

Having the macro lenses I would stick with them. You remove the bellows and stand off the camera with some 1/4x20 studding- some DSLRs are too deep to fit so you would need to check that.

Edited January 10, 2021 by spacecadet

[Harry Harrison]

If you read the threads you'll see that the 60mm Macro is found to be better than the 105mm ( see comments from MDM) and the 105mm / ES-1 combination would need 52mm extension rings (probably from the Far East) to extend the distance from the lens.

[Harry Harrison]

9 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

You haven't quoted the link.

Thanks, corrected that now

[Harry Harrison]

The ES-1 neatly solves the problem of precise alignment to the slide which is essential, the Illumitran does this also but often needs initial setting up with the aid of a mirror and some improvised shims, this is more evident with a heavy camera of course.

[wiskerke]

I would kill a cheaper enlarger to use as a copy stand.

And a more adaptable one. Unless you already have the copy attachment (around $200 for a simple piece of metal) in which case, you could try it out and change back in seconds.

 

Not sure what the cheapest enlargers in Britain are at the moment, or what your local website is for free and cheap stuff, but it cannot be too hard to find one.

The simplest ones may be the best. Recently I have adapted a very basic Omega and now I'm struggling with a huge IFF Super Repro.

The Omega is much easier to get into alignment. It did require a hacksaw initially though to get the enlarger part off. The IFF doesn't, but is a dog to get true. With a depth of field around 0.5mm at f5.6 or 8 when you're copying a 35mm negative, that's quite critical.

 

My Illumitran was a useful piece of kit in film days, but would not be very convenient for digital, unless you have to use flash. I still have a flash base unit by Beam; I have sold the Illumitran long ago. I have not used the Beam in 15 or 20 years I think. (Not entirely true: I have tested it for some post in this forum.)

In my collection I also have a Leica Reprovit IIa which is the finest copy instrument I have ever worked with. But it would be very difficult to adapt and a shame as well. Then again, it's all just tools.

 

What to look for in a stand: you do need height adjustment. Preferably fine adjustment.

An easy way to get the thing aligned in both ways.

And an easy way to keep it aligned.

For that I use cheap Chinese Arca Swiss knock off QR adapters. Sometimes I just drill an extra hole for an off-center screw to keep it from rotating. But that's the easiest plane. To and fro is the hardest of course. If everything else fails: add an extra base board and align that. (In seconds with some pieces of cardboard at the corners underneath.)

And it has to be stable. Most stable: bolt it to a wall.

 

wim

 

[spacecadet]

7 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

My Illumitran was a useful piece of kit in film days, but would not be very convenient for digital, unless you have to use flash.

I bought one specifically for my slides and negs and found it quite quick. But I have time rather than money and I did spend quite a while on setup and building my own carriers. The flash means it doesn't have to be particularly rigid.

[wiskerke]

1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

I bought one specifically for my slides and negs and found it quite quick. But I have time rather than money and I did spend quite a while on setup and building my own carriers. The flash means it doesn't have to be particularly rigid.

 

That's an important benefit if you're in an unstable workspace: With macro, the tiniest of movements have a serious impact. At the moment my setup is in a part of the house with wooden floors on a steel sub-frame, which means that someone walking in another part of the house will cause just a tiny bit of vibration. Just enough to be visible in my measurements. Cars in the street are visible too, because we have a speed bump next to the house. Luckily it's a quiet street.

I have been testing all my enlarger, copy and macro lenses to see which ones were the best. 47 in all - 22 lent by friends and 1 rented. In the end I bought a new one like the one I had rented, but decided against the A7RIV - for now 😂.

I found the workflow where the camera could do it's digital magic (exposure & WB) quicker even if once in a while I had to wait for a quiet moment. The same for the auto focus vs manual focus. However like manual focus auto focus can and does have flaws. But it's a lot quicker than I am.

With flash there would be no AWB and no automatic exposure and no auto focus. Though I may probably use some sort of focus hold if working tethered. However I have yet to find that one out.

After I was done I was gifted the big IFF stand. The stability of the small diy Omega stand wasn't too great, but in the real world the big expensive IFF is not a whole lot better.

Alignment was done a lot easier on the Omega: I had exchanged two Philips screws for Allen screws and alignment took about 10-20 seconds this way. While the IFF has no way of micro alignment at all. So I ended up shimming the column as far as it would go and doing the rest on the light box which is the base for the negative stage from my old diy Franken-enlarger. It's originally from a Krokus (Polish). (I do have Liesegang, Leitz, Omega, Beseler, Opemus, and probably a few more as well.) The humble Krokus is good enough.

 

wim

 

 

[spacecadet]

31 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

unstable workspace

Sounds like me!

Only kidding, probably.

To fill the frame on APS-C I need quite a long stand-off so I have the bellows above the column. Even in our stable house that would not stay still for long.. So flash it is.

Since DSLRs are fussy as to which older flash setups they will trigger (A350 yes, A55 no,, A58.....used to but not anymore), it was draw the curtains and open flash until I got the Chinese radio trigger for under £10. Magic.

I tether now and only check focus once in a while- the enlarger lenses I'm using all have a bit of focus shift (even a big old process lens, which surprised me) so it has to be done at f11.

I can set up and go in a few minutes- it's surprising how often you need to pull negs from the files.

Edited January 10, 2021 by spacecadet

[wiskerke]

1 hour ago, spacecadet said:

Sounds like me!

Only kidding, probably.

To fill the frame on APS-C I need quite a long stand-off so I have the bellows above the column. Even in our stable house that would not stay still for long.. So flash it is.

Since DSLRs are fussy as to which older flash setups they will trigger (A350 yes, A55 no,, A58.....used to but not anymore), it was draw the curtains and open flash until I got the Chinese radio trigger for under £10. Magic.

I tether now and only check focus once in a while- the enlarger lenses I'm using all have a bit of focus shift (even a big old process lens, which surprised me) so it has to be done at f11.

I can set up and go in a few minutes- it's surprising how often you need to pull negs from the files.

 

Yes all that!

Focus shift, don't start me on focus shift!

Have you ever seen it while using them as enlarging lenses? I can honestly say I had no idea focus shift even existed.

But them macro guys now counter that by firstly checking all their lenses at a whole series of images at 1 micron distance apart for every aperture. And then doing the final copy at 10 to 30 images which they then focus stack like insects. At the largest aperture (or the sharpest which ever comes first) of course. 

I am still in the testing phase of all this obviously. All with my own images, but the goal may be the digitization of the archive of a friend who died last year. We have not decided yet. Otherwise it will be just my own stuff. I knew one of the problems would be to keep the information that comes with the negatives, like what's written on the sleeves, but was still amazed by what else has to stay with it. My own sleeves are full of just marks. Like lots of marks: used often. Negatives upside down: printed and put back in. Strips missing, turning up in a separate sheet: do I file them with the first or the latter? The separate sleeve usually means I have printed them for a show.

So it's a very useful test run so far. No definite conclusions yet.

My light source is the one DDoug recommended 2 years ago here: Viltrox 116T.

 

wim

[spacecadet]

12 hours ago, wiskerke said:

Focus shift, don't start me on focus shift!

Have you ever seen it while using them as enlarging lenses? I can honestly say I had no idea focus shift even existed.

It was always a bit theoretical, and it's so long since I made a print, but yes, it happened with my cheap lenses. It was supposed to be much better in more expensive optics- you probably have those, can you confirm it?

This is good on it

https://photographylife.com/what-is-focus-shift

 

[wiskerke]

3 hours ago, spacecadet said:

It was always a bit theoretical, and it's so long since I made a print, but yes, it happened with my cheap lenses. It was supposed to be much better in more expensive optics- you probably have those, can you confirm it?

This is good on it

https://photographylife.com/what-is-focus-shift

 

 

Thank you: good clear explanation. I know what it is though. Just not that it could affect enlarging lenses when I was printing.

I have no means to determine focus shift or even to attribute faults I'm seeing to focus shift. What I do is quite simple: look at the file size of the JPG image that comes with my RAW. It is how digital point and shoots determine the sharpest image in a burst if they have such a function.

This is valid because the rest of the process is stationary: the setup of course, but also the rest remains exactly the same. In cameras the system can be fooled when the same details or high contrast areas appear in different places in the image. Like with motion blur under a stroboscope as an extreme example. Also a kick to a tripod could cause it, with the start and end of the movement causing two distinct sharp images of the same object.

After crunching the numbers I load the images into Photoshop layers and look for overall sharpness. Because my goal at the moment is copying b/w negatives, I'm mostly concerned with the corners showing sharp and correct grain. This run was all about 35mm which is the bulk of my archive, but my friend's archive consists mainly of 6x9's.

I have used a pretty grainy ordinary Tri-X negative and a microfiche because those are very flat and detailed. I have used the same microfiche since 1984 or so. The Tri-X (from 1978) was not totally random, but still nothing special. It does contain signs for Agfa and Kodak and lots of bikes. 😁

After finding the best apertures for the best lenses, I load those images into Photoshop layers again to find the best of the best. Bridge users will recognize the procedure. The universal value is not that high, it's mainly the best from a pretty big amount of lenses that are available to me. (I bought 6 more in the process 😂.)

And in the end decided to buy this Zony 90mm. Mainly because my findings were that it was as good as or better than the best of the enlarging and macro lenses I had available and that manual focusing was the weak point in the whole process. And the most time consuming. With no way to improve upon: only tethered focusing could have sped things up a little bit, and make it more accurate and consistent but that's impossible with a manual setup. (Macro bellows and all that.)

If speed and consistency would have been no criteria, one of my 50mm Rodagons; my 2 80mm Rodagons; 105mm Nikkor; 90mm Apo Rodagon; 40 and 50mm Focotars; 75mm Tominon and surprisingly the Meopta Meogons were all up to the task, but usually only at one aperture. My old manual Olympus 90mm Macro was also good.

Don't trust any lens that has been opened or serviced. Period. The worst in my test: all three of the much hyped (Ctein!) Computars.

They probably were great right out of the factory. But they do not age well or people hold on to their good ones and the ones on the market are all rubbish.

One thing this test proved to be good for: ferreting out the bad ones in our combined collections. And there were some unexpected (bad) surprises there.

Caveat: all this testing was done on 1:1 and most enlarging lenses are optimized from 1:5 and up. The more expensive ones from 1:10 to 1:20.

 

wim

 

 

 

[MDM]

 

On 10/01/2021 at 12:10, Stephen Lloyd said:

I have a Nikon D850 which I know comes with slide duplication attachments for 60mm macro lenses - which I'm also keen to try as my old Coolscan fluctuates between dying, dead and almost dead at will, despite having it in at Nikon. Some things are just old and start to fail beyond repair. I also have a 105mm macro, not it's shorter sibling, which is a lens I like a lot so no plans to change that. 

 

 

4 hours ago, wiskerke said:

 

 

If speed and consistency would have been no criteria, one of my 50mm Rodagons; my 2 80mm Rodagons; 105mm Nikkor; 90mm Apo Rodagon; 40 and 50mm Focotars; 75mm Tominon and surprisingly the Meopta Meogons were all up to the task, but usually only at one aperture.

 

wim

 

 

 

 

 

I was disappointed in my 105 Nikkor (fairly new one) on my D810 with the ES-1 slide copier and extensions for copying 35mm slides - corner and edge sharpness were poor at all the apertures I tried. The best lenses I found of the few I tested for overall and corner to corner sharpness were the legendary 55mm Micro-Nikkor and the 90mm Tamron (version before the most recent one). Because the Tamron has autofocus which works perfectly on the  D810 even at the very close distances involved and excellent edge top edge sharpness, that is now my preferred lens for slide copying. 

 

The D850 does not come with slide duplication attachments but these can be purchased separately. If using with anything but recommended 1:1 macro lenses then adapters and extension rings are required. From experience, the 45MP image size is probably a disadvantage and downsizing in post will be necessary. I downsize from the 36MP D810 as well. I think the sweet spot would be around 24MP. 

Edited January 11, 2021 by MDM

[wiskerke]

1 hour ago, MDM said:

I was disappointed in my 105 Nikkor (fairly new one) on my D810 with the ES-1 slide copier and extensions for copying 35mm slides - corner and edge sharpness were poor at all the apertures I tried. The best lenses I found of the few I tested for overall and corner to corner sharpness were the legendary 55mm Micro-Nikkor and the 90mm Tamron (version before the most recent one). Because the Tamron has autofocus which works perfectly on the  D810 even at the very close distances involved and excellent edge top edge sharpness, that is now my preferred lens for slide copying. 

 

The D850 does not come with slide duplication attachments but these can be purchased separately. If using with anything but recommended 1:1 macro lenses then adapters and extension rings are required. From experience, the 45MP image size is probably a disadvantage and downsizing in post will be necessary. I downsize from the 36MP D810 as well. I think the sweet spot would be around 24MP. 

This 105mm EL Nikkor is an old 5.6 enlarging lens.  Here (>enlarging lenses >Nikon El-Nikkor 105mm) is a test. Page 2 has a picture. It's indeed best at f8. The performance is a tiny bit under my 2 Rodagons 5.6/80mm, probably because the Nikkor has some haze. This often occurs when enlarging lenses have been left overnight or longer with the lamp still on. Those condensers were quite good at projecting all those hot rays just through that hole were the lens sits. As if they were designed to do that. Oh wait.. 😁

 

I don't see any reason why an image from a D850 should be reduced. Other than maybe the quality of the original.

Those Tamron 90mm SP or DI's are very fine macro lenses.

 

wim

[Harry Harrison]

On 10/01/2021 at 21:18, wiskerke said:

At the largest aperture (or the sharpest which ever comes first) of course.

I was intrigued by this phrase because I'd read someone assert on another forum about high-end slide copying that essentially 'all lenses are sharpest wide open'. You're not asserting that here but it's as if you might have found it to be true of some lenses that you've tested and yet I've never found that to be true, nor have I seen MTF charts of high end lenses which corroborate that. I've certainly found that my enlarger lenses, Rodagons mostly, have a very small range of optimum sharpness, in fact 'range' isn't perhaps the right word, more like 'f8 and be there'.

 

I presume that Sonys are the same as Fujis in that they have some kind of focus peaking and magnify function, is it not possible to rely on that to detect optimum focus?

 

 

[MDM]

1 hour ago, wiskerke said:

This 105mm EL Nikkor is an old 5.6 enlarging lens.  Here (>enlarging lenses >Nikon El-Nikkor 105mm) is a test. Page 2 has a picture. It's indeed best at f8. The performance is a tiny bit under my 2 Rodagons 5.6/80mm, probably because the Nikkor has some haze. This often occurs when enlarging lenses have been left overnight or longer with the lamp still on. Those condensers were quite good at projecting all those hot rays just through that hole were the lens sits. As if they were designed to do that. Oh wait.. 😁

 

I don't see any reason why an image from a D850 should be reduced. Other than maybe the quality of the original.

Those Tamron 90mm SP or DI's are very fine macro lenses.

 

wim

 

OK I wasn't reading that carefully and just saw 105mm Nikkor. I used to have a 50mm El-Nikkor many years ago. I still have a Durst Neonon (50 I think) in a drawer which has not been used in an awful long time. I recall it was a very good enlarger lens though. 

 

The Tamron 90 is better than the Nikkor 105 overall. I was going to sell it until I realised how good it actually is - the Tamron stabilisation is much better but then the Nikkor was first generation VR. That has improved massively but they have never updated the 105.

 

I guess the reason high MP images can look less sharp than lower MP images both at 100% is the old viewing distance thing that was debated a lot here when Nikon brought out the 36MP D800(E) but yes also no doubt the quality of the original slide.  I wonder also if the grain affects the sharpness. I shoot slide copies  at ISO 64 so what looks like noise must be grain as the D810 and D850 are effectively noise-free at that ISO. I always downsize anyway both for improving apparent sharpness and for grain reduction. 

[MDM]

35 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

I was intrigued by this phrase because I'd read someone assert on another forum about high-end slide copying that essentially 'all lenses are sharpest wide open'. You're not asserting that here but it's as if you might have found it to be true of some lenses that you've tested and yet I've never found that to be true, nor have I seen MTF charts of high end lenses which corroborate that. I've certainly found that my enlarger lenses, Rodagons mostly, have a very small range of optimum sharpness, in fact 'range' isn't perhaps the right word, more like 'f8 and be there'.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know who said that or where it is in that enormous thread but it is nonsense. 

[wiskerke]

24 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

I was intrigued by this phrase because I'd read someone assert on another forum about high-end slide copying that essentially 'all lenses are sharpest wide open'. You're not asserting that here but it's as if you might have found it to be true of some lenses that you've tested and yet I've never found that to be true, nor have I seen MTF charts of high end lenses which corroborate that. I've certainly found that my enlarger lenses, Rodagons mostly, have a very small range of optimum sharpness, in fact 'range' isn't perhaps the right word, more like 'f8 and be there'.

 

I presume that Sonys are the same as Fujis in that they have some kind of focus peaking and magnify function, is it not possible to rely on that to detect optimum focus?

 

 

 

The focus peaking is useful to see if a setup is in alignment: if you move the camera or the lens up and down and the peaking moves diagonally across the image, you know there's something not right.

So it works in a global way. Sharp lenses and sharp apertures show a larger blob of peaking and cycling through the apertures of a sharp lens you do see the peaking move from the center outwards to the corners and then vanish in the end. It does help, but for critical work I never depend on it.

And it helps to see if a lens is a total dud: those will not show any peaking.

 

Not many lenses are best at their largest opening. If they are, it's only in the center. It's very rare if a lens performs really good over the whole image area at the largest opening.

But it's easy to think of a scenario where that will be the case.

 

Take a moment to think and formulate your answer here. 😂

 

OK here goes: suppose the largest opening is exactly that where it is the sharpest, but the next lens that's not the sharpest has a much larger largest opening? Right that's one.

Then consider a lens that has a much larger image circle like my 150mm Apo Gerogon, which combines these two qualities: it's from a process camera and designed to copy 50x60cm (20x24) originals to a film format of maybe 30 by 40 cm. Or maybe even larger. So you're only using that sharp center here. And it's largest opening is f9!

It's smallest is 45, but f9 is indeed the sharpest. Then again most of the lenses will have sharp corners around f9.

Actually a lens like that is not a bad choice at all. And most of them were free at one point, because nobody knew what to do with them. I was surprised to see it was that good.

 

wim

 

[Harry Harrison]

9 hours ago, MDM said:

I don't know who said that or where it is in that enormous thread but it is nonsense. 

Yes, on the face of it, but possibly true in some circumstances with high end process lenses. It wasn't on this forum, it was on one about Imacon scanners and the chap was describing a high end copying system with a medium format digital back and some kind of fancy very high end macro/process lens.  Clearly as a statement in isolation it was wrong but I wondered if there might be some element of truth when describing lenses well above my pay grade.

[Harry Harrison]

9 hours ago, wiskerke said:

OK here goes: suppose the largest opening is exactly that where it is the sharpest, but the next lens that's not the sharpest has a much larger largest opening?

Yes, good example but I haven't come across it in practice with my lenses so it's interesting to know what you've discovered in your large testing sample. MTF charts for Rodenstock 'Apo' lenses don't seem to show this quite but it's true that they don't need stopping down as much as standard enlarger lenses to give optimum performance. The Imacon Precision II that I have uses an f4 75mm Rodenstock Magnagon which I think is fixed at f5.6 but there's no markings. It's certainly sharp. I don't have one but I've always assumed that the 75mm Apo-Rodagon lenses optimised for 1:1 would be best, in fact I think that optically they are very similar to the Magnagon, if not the same.

 

These are process lenses and it's a different matter for camera lenses where using a lens wide open gives good 'bokeh' and pre-digital allowed pictures to be taken in circumstances where it would otherwise be impossible, corner sharpness often didn't matter. Cartier-Bresson's pictures of the Velodrome d'Hiver show this nicely, but there are many other examples. That 90mm Sony macro looks exceptional.

[MDM]

34 minutes ago, Harry Harrison said:

Yes, on the face of it, but possibly true in some circumstances with high end process lenses. It wasn't on this forum, it was on one about Imacon scanners and the chap was describing a high end copying system with a medium format digital back and some kind of fancy very high end macro/process lens.  Clearly as a statement in isolation it was wrong but I wondered if there might be some element of truth when describing lenses well above my pay grade.

 

Sorry about that Harry. I misread your post and thought you were talking about the slide copying thread where most of what was said is accurate although there is some rather dubious unsubstantiated by evidence stuff in there as well. 

Edited January 12, 2021 by MDM

[spacecadet]

Slightly OT, probably.

I've just re-read my Langford as I'd recalled something I couldn't detail.

Wondering why my big process lens was rather indifferently sharp, albeit in a way that could largely be compensated in processing, Langford reminds me that a process lens is meant to reproduce type at high contrast rather than the highest possible resolution.

With my latest images of winter heliotrope (see nature thread) I'm almost as well off cropping from my kit zoom as using the process lens on bellows at higher magnification.

 

[Harry Harrison]

9 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Langford reminds me that a process lens is meant to reproduce type at high contrast rather than the highest possible resolution.

Interesting, I might be using the term 'process' lens too loosely.