Hi there - may be the wrong place..... I have just bought a s/h Omega D5xl enlarger and need a bit of advice on how to use it. It came with a four blade masking device and a number of negative carriers. Do I use the masking device and the negative carriers together and, if so, which way up/down ? I bought an instruction manual and that really is a product guide rather than a manual.

TIA

Dave

-- David Tolcher (davidjt@btinternet.com), October 03, 2001

Answers

I don't have hands-on with a D5, but on our old D3, we always use the proper size negative carrier for the negs being printed. In our experience, the 4-blade mask thingie has two uses:

+ Masking down a large negative if you are only printing a portion - we frequently did this for free-size litho negatives that we just put between two pieces of glass (vs. a standard negative carrier).

+ Preventing light overspill, both around the easel blades (i.e., that could fog other paper waiting to printed or that was just printed when doing multiple prints) and the negative carrier (that could cause uneven brightness or diffraction flare in the image being projected).

It's not the most essential piece of enlarger hardware, but it can be useful...

-- Michael Goldfarb (mgoldfar@mobius.com), October 05, 2001.