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Beseler 67C Enlarger

Ref. : http://www.jollinger.com/photo/enlargers/beseler-67.html

Specifications: Beseler 67C enlarger, all negative sizes to 6 x 7cm. (2¼" x 2 3/4"), hinged
spring-loaded glassless negative carriers, 23 x 16 1/2" baseboard, 40 in. inclined upright,
accessory condenser for 35mm, 75-watt PH IIIa lamp. Other Features: Red filter, switch in
line cord. Price: $209.95.

As time goes on, designs for enlargers become increasingly better. The practical effect is the
consumer gets more for his dollar. There is a mass movement back to the darkroom in this
country. This means that manufacturers can count on higher-volume sales and therefore,
lower-per-unit production costs; the new Beseler 67C enlarger is a case in point. It is a lot of
enlarger for a moderate sum of money. This becomes clearly evident even when the machine
is examined casually.

When you do take a closer look, quality beneath the surface is apparent. The machine has a
heavy look, is extremely rigid and has a good, solid feel to it. Castings are used in places
where stampings would be expected. Mounted on the 16 x 23". baseboard is a rather elegant-
inclined, upright column finished in matte black. This column is strengthened by stiffening
fins on each side, with another pair at the rear.

The upright measures 40' high and, as magnification increases, the image moves forward on
the baseboard, clearing the base for ease in printing large pictures. The head moves up and
down on the upright smoothly by means of a twist-lock handle. Grab the handle on the right
side of the head and twist it toward you to unlock the head. Position the head at the
magnification you want and then twist it away from you to lock it tight. You will find it a
very good design: fast, easy and positive.

Once the head is positioned you have a choice of focusing with your left or right hand by
means of 2¼" knobs that are friction coupled to a heavy brass rod, which, in turn, drives the
focusing unit. The 67C provides 5" of bellows extension, enough for reductions from a 35mm
negative, and employs Beseler's excellent lensboard mounting system. You push-and-drop
the lensboard to remove it and push-and-lift to install. It's fast and convenient. A red filter
(which we question the value of) flips in and out of the light path; in fact, if you get a bit
overenthusiastic using the filter, it may flip clear across the room. You see, there is no
retaining lip on the front of the filter mount, so when you move it toward you, the filter goes
it's own way. (We solved this problem by throwing it away.)

Pull down a massive lever on the left side of the enlarger head and the lamphouse is raised
and locked. You can now remove the negative carrier. It's made of aluminum and spring
loaded at the rear causing it to be open and ready for the negative as soon as it's removed
from the enlarger. Locating pins center the film in the carrier. You will notice a second set of
pins used to locate the carrier in the housing. It's fast, neat and accurate.

The lamphouse design follows that of the Omega B66 and the Durst CE 1000. Lifting a panel
on the front of the lamphouse gives you total and easy access to everything inside--
condensers, filter frame, heat absorbing glass and the lamp itself. A pair of 4" condensers are

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standard and are used for 2¼ square as well as 6 x 7cm formats. A third condenser is placed
above the other two for doing 35mm work.

Now for some critical testing on the negative for alignment, illumination and temperature
gradients. In any enlarger, overall sharpness is impossible unless the lens, negative and
baseboard are parallel. We test parallelism by using a heavy bar with a spirit level that is
hinged on one end, while the other end can be tilted by turning a setscrew. First the bar is
placed on the baseboard and the bubble is centered. The bubble should stay centered when
the bar is placed across the negative stage and lensmount. Our criterion is that ¼ bubble-
length variation is acceptable; if it's more than that, we fail the enlarger. We often see
alignments that are better than 1/2 bubble length but rarely does a machine come in at closer
than 1/8 bubble length. The beseler 67C was so well aligned that the error was undecernible.
Estimation puts the variation somewhere around 1/24 of a bubble length on all three planes.
We have rarely seen a machine this well aligned simply because shipping can often affect
enlarger alignment. How Beseler achieved this unusual result is a mystery, but we hope they
engrave the formula in bronze and keep it safe.

We use a Lektra-PTM-7a Lux-meter to measure the light at the center of the field, and at the
corners, to see how even the illumination is. We found that the center and the upper and
lower left hand corners were virtually identical-within ¼ stop. At the right-hand corners light
fell off to just under ½ stop.

The temperature rose swiftly and finally stabilized at 32°C (90°F). Since exposures were
rather short in this fast machine, heat proved to be no problem. Using our standard negative
on llfobrom #2 paper developed in Dektol 2:1 we found 12 sec. exposure at f/16 just about
right.

With the head at the top of the upright, we found that a 12½ x 18½" print could be made from
35mm negatives without any problem. For anything bigger, the enlarger had to be reversed
on the baseboard. This brings us to another point--the ingenious way in which the upright and
the baseboard are joined. A large bolt is mounted in the baseboard with a washer to keep the
bolt's head up a hair. The upright has a keyway which slips onto the bolt. Three screws are
then tightened by hand and the enlarger is mounted. The 67C is the easiest machine to
assemble that we have ever seen. Now, back to those big prints. You turn the enlarger around
on its baseboard by removing the three screws (no tool necessary) and reverse the machine.
Then replace the screws and it's done.

There are two more pluses for the Beseler 67C. We haven't made a big thing about the fact
that the enlarger can accommodate negatives up to 6 x 7cm (Mamiya RB67 Pro-S makes that
size negative.) Modern's Editors were uniformly impressed by the workmanship, careful
design and execution of the Beseler 67C. We had guessed that it cost more than it did, and to
us that means there's a lot of value there. It's a first class machine without a first class price
tag--and that's hard to come by these days.

Dichro 67 Coloread

By using dichroic filters the Beseler 67 Colorhead is designed to extend the capability of the
67 enlarger to color printing. The Beseler 67 Colorhead consists of four parts: a housing that
fits the enlarger chassis by means of two set screws; the mixing chamber; the lamp and filter

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assembly; and the power supply. Although the power supply is essential, it is sold as a
separate item. To change from the condenser head to the colorhead, just loosen two setscrews
at the rear of the condenser head and remove it. Replace the colorhead in the same position,
tighten the setscrews and that's it--easy and fast. Now plug the head into the power supply,
plug the power supply into a voltage regulator (which in turn gets plugged into a timer which
is plugged into an outlet) and you are ready to go.

The Beseler 67 Colorhead is a really "up-front" design. The cyan, magenta and yellow filter
controls, the dials and the white, light lever are all plainly visible and easy to use on the front
plate of the head. Let's look inside the unit. We do that by simply lifting up on the front plate
and the lamp and filter assembly comes away. What's left is the mixing chamber. This is
simply lifted out. The mixing chamber used for our test covered the full 6x7 format. A 35mm
chamber was not available, nor did Beseler announce any plans for making one available.
That could be a problem; we'll discuss it later.

The mixing chamber is shaped like a small, slope-roofed house with a small window to allow
light to enter. Except for the knobs and optical components, the lamp housing and filter
assembly are made of heavy metal, with no evidence of plastic parts anywhere. Turn any
color-control knob and a cam is actuated that moves a dichroic filter into the light path. The
knobs and the indicating windows are color coded. The scale is marked from 0-200cc in units
of 1 cc. The action is firm, tight, and positive, this gave us the feeling that there was
absolutely no slippage in the linkage. This also means that you can repeat a setting with great
accuracy--a comforting thought.

To the right of the face plate is a white-light lever, which, in the up position, gives you
filtration. Flip it down and the filter system is moved out of the light path and you get white
light for focusing and black-and-white printing. Here again the mechanical action was very
positive--a sign of good design and workmanship.

Let's put it back together and make a few tests. Pull down the lever on the left of the
colorhead and it lifts, allowing access to the negative carrier. We slipped in a Thermo-Slide
here and did some temperature measurements to see how much heat would hit your negative
during exposure. The temperature climbed rather rapidly during the first minute and a half of
exposure. Room temperature was 68°F (20°C). At the end of a minute and a half the
temperature had gone up seven degrees centigrade. That's a pretty fast climb, but nowhere
near high enough to cause any negative damage.

Since almost all color heads interpose a mixing chamber between the light and the negative,
there is a great deal of thermal insulation present, and almost no heat rise takes place. the
temperature leveled off at 30°C after two and one-half min. Most color exposures run less
than a minute (the upper end of color paper reciprocity effect). So why are we timing out to
three minutes? Well get into that when we talk about the lack of a 35mm mixing chamber.

One troublesome note; when the head was set in place and carefully adjusted with the
retaining screws well tightened, there was a bit more of a light leak than we cared for. It
originated at the point where the colorhead meets the carrier, and it resulted in a faint sliver of
light around the darkroom at carrier height. It wasn't enough to fog paper, but was somewhat
annoying.

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Now let's measure evenness of illumination. We'll do it two ways: first, with a 50mm lens
and 35mm carrier in place; then with a 105mm lens and a 6 x 7 carrier in place. Results with
the 35mm setup were first class. The difference corner to corner was undetectable by our
Lektra PTM-7a photometer. The difference from edges to center was somewhere around 1/10
stop--impressive. The same test repeated for 6 x 7 indicated that results dropped from
"impressive" to only "excellent." Once again there was no discernible difference from corner-
to-corner illumination, but the center-to-corner difference was 1/5 stop--still a fine
performance.

When we made prints from 6 x 7 (or 6 x 6) negatives, the Beseler 67 Colorhead was pretty
fast. Using our standard Kodak Ektacolor negative, and printing on Ektacolor paper 37 RC
we made 8 x 10 prints using a filtration of 80Y and 65M at an aperture of f/8 in just 25 sec.
That's a nice comfortable exposure time, well clear of reciprocity problems. But when we
switched to a 35mm negative and a 50mm lens, exposures increased dramatically. In fact, the
exposure difference was about 2 1/2 between comparing the two formats at the same f/stop,
for the same size print, from the same negative, we found exposure times of 65 sec. for the
35mm, as compared with 25 seconds for the 6x7. Or, in a neutral test, a ratio of exactly 7:19.
This is easily accounted for when you consider that the broad spread of light for the 6x7 will
naturally cause a drop in intensity on the smaller 35mm area where greater light
concentration is needed. And the solution is equally simple--providing a 35mm mixing
chamber. We hope Beseler will do this in the near future. From both an operating and an
image-quality standpoint, the Beseler 67 enlarger and Colorhead were a delight to work with.

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