I think Joe's got a good understanding. For holding the paper, you might consider magnetic strip material from the hardware store. Your easel wall would be a sheet of sheet metal. thin rolled galvanzied would work just fin. I've shot a lot of works on paper, held horizontally on a wall. A couple small pencil marks or tape marking the upper corners is sufficient for good repeatable positioning. A vertically held 8x10 neg is not going to sag as it might in a horizontal holder. Heat buckling is always an issue. Might use heat dispersing glass between the lamp and the diffuser. Using the diffuser also allows you to put a computer fan on the light mixing chamber to take away heat.
As for the $5 fluorescent light diffuser. These are good light diffusers. I keep one around that I lay over 2 or 4 4' flourescent tubes when I have a large number of slides to sort. However on an enlarger I think you'll find that they may not be even. The test for this is to focus a neg, remove it and then make a light gray exposure on a sheet of paper. Ideally it should be dead even corner to corner. If you own a Bessler enlarger with condensers, as I do. Do this test. Like me I think you'll be throughly disgusted with the results. My 4x5X enlarger made really ugly uneven concentric donuts. A small bug that got in the condenser also left his shadow. When you print you mostly don't notice this, but it is there degrading your print. I redesigned my whole head--making a better source out of a tunafish can and a surplus quartz lamp. For horizontal tracking you might try using 1x1" angle iron with 4" iron gate wheels. They can support any weight. attaching the angle to the floor perpendicular to the easel wall will make a very solid highly movable enlarger. They're inexpensive too. Get them at hardware storess, or a metal supply. ---William Nettles [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nettles Photo / Imaging Site http://www.wgn.net/~nettles > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 12:07:10 -0700 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Cameramakers digest, Vol 1 #279 - 14 msgs > > True, but you might also want to consider the paper. How will it be > supported... Vacuum easel? Otherwise I'd go to horizontal. > > I've used horizontal 10x10 enlargers with glass carriers and have never had > a problem. Either way the larger formats will have different issues to > resolve that smaller ones don't... There are pros and cons of both... > > Footprint vs. Ceiling height might make the decision for you. > > joe _______________________________________________ Cameramakers mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://rmp.opusis.com/mailman/listinfo/cameramakers
