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Old 27th June 2015, 11:09 PM
LiamCH LiamCH is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2015
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Default Gnome Beta II Enlarger - missing condenser

Evening all, first post on here so I'll just briefly introduce myself. I'm Liam, 24, and while I did grow up with film and SLRs, I've really learned most of my photographic techniques on digital - with no darkroom experience of course. However in the past six years I have been getting into film more and more... I've dabbled with my own printing on a couple of occasions, using a Zenit UPA5 briefcase enlarger to make my own prints for university back in 2012. Produced some lovely results, but in the last three years I've not really found an awful lot of time to use film sadly... That's all changed however and I'm very much back in the game, and this time very much interested in medium format (6x6 and 6x9) as well as 35mm.

So I took the plunge and bought an enlarger that fulfilled my one and only criteria - it could do up to 6x9. It's also quite compact compared to most of the things I found for sale which was a major consideration since I'm not going to require huge prints. So here it is... a pretty ancient somewhat crusty little thing but I fully hope to get it usable. Bought an Industar 100U 105mm lens for it which as I understand is suitable for up to 6x9cm (I do love my old Soviet photographic gear!)





Of course it was at that point I realised that I was missing a rather crucial part... the condenser. To be honest I was far more familiar with the concept of simple diffuser type enlargers so I didn't realise at the time that I should have obviously been checking to make sure there was a condenser lens present too... As someone with very little experience with enlargers in general (and precisely none with identifying appropriate parts or finding new ones for them), can anyone tell me how feasible it is to get this enlarger into a usable state? I did wonder about simply sticking a piece of ground glass into the bottom to turn it into a diffuser enlarger... I'm guessing of course it's not that simple. Does anyone know where I might source the proper condenser lens for it? There are two different Gnome condenser lenses for sale on eBay right now I've noticed... How would I know if they're suitable for mine? They're both described as 3 3/4" across but the base of my enlarger is nearly 4 1/2" wide in the base. Any advice would be enormously appreciated... especially today before the auctions end so I know whether or not they'd be suitable!

Thanks in advance,

Liam
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