What Was the Best Enlarger Ever Made?

Wait, what? What is this, 1989? 

Well, Tracy Chapman did just perform "Fast Car" at the Grammys.

It's a silly question now, and if you do not care about the answer, well, few do. Keep in mind, though, please, that not every post here is for everyone. A minority of TOP readers still shoot film or remember it fondly, and a smaller minority like, or liked, working in the darkroom. Don't begrudge those folks a few posts in their area of interest, even if it doesn't fall in yours.

/lecture mode, and sorry for lecturing!

But, to proceed. In my opinion, the best enlarger ever made was the 4x5 model (which was actually a family of slightly different models) made by LPL of Japan, now located in Tokorozawa City, Saitama Prefecture. They used to give the location as "Tokyo," so maybe they have moved, or maybe they were always in Tokorozawa City, which is sort of a satellite city of Tokyo. Mine was a 4500II, with the VCCE (variable contrast, constant exposure) module.

Saunders/LPL 4x5" enlargers in the darkroom of the Photography BFA program at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire

My opinion is—how shall I put this modestly?—well-informed. I didn't use every enlarger there was (most enlargers, like most pool tables and most home treadmills, were junk), but I used a lot, from a ridiculous tiny toy with a decentered triplet lens to a massive floorstanding 8x10 Durst with a lens that cost a number of months' worth of my rent at the time. I never owned an Omega D-series, but I maintained them when I was a lab manager. I tested a whole bunch of enlarger lenses. I printed pictures professionally for every conceivable purpose—a display at the Monterey Jazz Festival, museum exhibitions, annual reports, headshots for actors, copy photographs of peoples' ancestors, news photos, the historical archives of deceased photographers for galleries, fine-art prints for photographers, portraits and pictures of pets and kids and houses and weddings, architectural interiors, PR photos and grip 'n' grins for schools and companies—on and on. The largest print I ever made was four feet by four feet—I used window planters lined with plastic for the solutions and washed the print out on the sidewalk, with a hose—and the most prints I ever made by hand from one negative was 500, which took all weekend including an all-nighter. Of course I printed my own negatives, too, sometimes. I worked in a lot of darkrooms.

I have to give John Sexton some credit for my top choice. It was what he used (Jerry Uelsmann too—Jerry had six), a powerful endorsement. John, who was Ansel's last assistant (of many) and helped Ansel with the last lifetime revision of his technical book series, The Camera, The Negative, and The Print (he even appears in the books here and there), is a revered nature and landscape photographer in his own right, known for his prized books and superb craftsmanship.

The 4x5" VCCE LPL was the end of a long quest for the "right" enlarger for me (the Focomat IIc being but one small step along the way). It remains the most ergonomic enlarger I ever used, and the most precise, and it had the most elegant light system, adapted from color dichroic-style light heads. A color-correct slide projector bulb was aimed into an aperture in a carefully engineered light-mixing box, past a sliding system of three adjustable glass filters with highly colorfast dyes: two in the colors to which VC papers are most sensitive, and the other an ND (neutral density) filter to keep the exposure time constant. All the operator had to do was turn a dial to input a continuous range of contrast on VC papers. The light is as bright and more even than that from a condenser head, and cooler in temperature at the negative stage than even a "cold" light head*.

To change filtration effects on the big enlarger you simply slid one filter module out of the head and inserted another one. So a VCCE model could be turned into a color enlarger simply and easily. Of course, the convenience is now gone, because the modules now cost far more than the whole enlarger used to, even adjusted for inflation. The smaller 670 didn't have the modules; it required dedicated heads for each kind of light source. But usually darkroom workers only needed one, the one of their preference.

Not quite gone
Only last July (2023), LPL announced "the discontinuation of production of photography and darkroom supplies," and, the company says, "the new name of DDL (Digital Data Laboratory) was adopted to renew the digital data related product group."

The enlargers weren't always branded LPL outside the Japanese home market. They were imported by various companies into a variety of markets and typically known by the importers' names. I always knew them under the name of Saunders, after the famous easels, another brand belonging to importer Berkey Marketing; later, Omega was the American importer, but Omega now lists all LPL enlargers as discontinued. I believe KHB Photografix, a repair shop in Ontario and the longtime Canadian importer, is the last outlet that has new-old stock (NOS). Prices, understandably, are rather high; an enlarger I last purchased for ~$700 (original 1983 price for the base condenser model: $289!) currently lists for CA$3,295 (US$2,445).

The contraption in the attic...er, basement
The Saunders/LPL 4500II, the model I had, was not ideal for 35mm negatives. The smaller medium-format 670 series (called 7700 in Canada) handled 35mm negatives better, although those models had an obvious and unnecessary weakness, which was that the negative carriers cropped 6x7cm negatives slightly. (You can see Ctein's original magazine review from way back in the day—March 1983—here. He reviewed it as a color enlarger.) So the 4500 and 4550 were best for 6x7cm, 6x9cm, and 4x5", and the smaller enlarger was best for 35mm. Both enlargers coped well enough with 6x6cm and 645.

There was one really neat trick you could do with the bigger enlarger and 35mm, though. I discovered that the glass 4x5" carrier would exactly fit nine 35mm frames if you overlapped the sprocket-holed edges. So you could make enlarged proof sheets with ease, nine negatives at a time, as long as you cut your negatives in strips of six. Four of those equaled one 36-exposure roll. Nine frames on an 11x14" or 16x20" sheet is the world's most elegant way of proofing 35mm, and, exposed at a consistent time and contrast, gives you all the information you need to skip the test strip and go right to a full first print.

Unfortunately, by the time I discovered that trick, I had moved to Chicago and left all my custom printing clients behind in D.C., so I never offered enlarged proofs to clients. Some of them would have gotten hooked, for sure.

There are worse fates; it could be in a landfill.
I also have not one but three Apo-Rodagon-N's.

The enlarger I have in my basement is an Omega/LPL 670 XL plain condenser model (the "XL" means that it has an extra long, or rather tall, column). I also have a separate VCCE head that is in not quite new condition.

I've never been much of a "keeper"; mostly, stuff shuffles into and out of my sweaty little grasp. Such is the lot of a reviewer. And I mentioned the other day that I should sell it. Looking into all this again over the weekend, however, I've decided that I should die with that LPL still in my possession. I might never use it again, even if I live to be 102, but I realized yesterday that not only do I never want to deal with having to acquire an enlarger at any time in the future, I also don't even want to have to think about dealing with it. So I'll just keep what I have as a talisman against my angst. I do aspire to pare my belongings down before my beloved son has to shovel through it all, but that's one old artifact he'll just have to deal with. Sorry, Xander!

So I guess I am a little sentimental about enlargers after all. I earned it, though, after the thousands of hours I spent in darkrooms in my time.

Mike

*Heat from light bulbs was a longstanding problem in enlargers generally. Many instructional books cautioned you not to leave a negative in an enlarger with the light on, as the heat could damage or even destroy the negative. I tried to buy a certain print from Frank DiPerna once, but he had left the negative cooking while he went to answer a phone call. He got distracted and accidentally burned a big hole right through the negative. Hence one appeal of the cooler so-called "cold light" sources. They still got warm—in fact they did not perform consistently until they warmed up—but not enough to damage negatives.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Comments

[Matt Kallio]

A fine essay, and even though I don't care about enlargers it is a joy to read fine writing about a technical thing. You don't mention Beseler, which I remember having a lot of prestige, and which was what they have in the community colleges around here, I believe. Long ago I had a Durst that had that nice modern styling but was just a consumer product.

[Patrick Perez]

Addressing your comment 'I do aspire to pare my belongings down before my beloved son has to shovel through it all, but that's one old artifact he'll just have to deal with. Sorry, Xander!' reminds me of a book from a few years ago that was adapted into a limited series on the Peacock streaming service. The book is The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter (The Swedish Art of Living & Dying Series) (ISBN 1501173243).

The point of the book is to help the reader make decisions now that will help loved ones when they are gone, but is relevant at any stage of life. Unlike the Marie Kondo idea of limiting the number of belongings, the idea here is helping one to be purposeful. Broadly speaking the practitioner divides things into categories of what they want to keep, what they want to donate/gift and identifying to whom, and what they want to dispose of.

My wife has suggested that we embark on this during this year, and I am wholly on board. Like you with the enlarger, I struggle about my aggregation of watches (avoiding the curatorial suggesting 'collection'). I like watches, but I neither have offspring that have interest, nor friends or relations that do. One of the main points in justifying a big spend is that of the heirloom quality. But with no one to receive it, it just becomes stuff to liquidate.

Patrick

[Nigel Voak]

I still have a LPL 7700 with both condenser and colour heads up in my now partially dismantled darkroom.

I was advised by a guy in a camera shop in London, I guess about forty years ago, that the LPL enlargers were better than the Durst enlargers, everybody outside of professional labs seemed to buy. It was good advice, I think

It replaced a beaten up, early version, Leica Focomat 1C. I did lust every now and then for the modern Focomat V35.

It came down to Italy with me, and served me faultlessly in my purpose build darkroom, when I was doing professional performing arts photography. A solid heavy brute of an enlarger, that I was never tempted to "upgrade".

Equally faultless, like the LPL, are the Kindermann stainless steel film reels and tanks, which was the wet side of my darkroom equipment.

I spent too many long hours, often all night session, in the darkroom, to ever think about returning to film.

I have also recently scanned my negatives that I was interested in, before handing them over to our provincial theater that commissioned them, for their historic archives.

I digress, but looking at the modern digital colour work that is now commissioned for performing arts photography, my B&W work has a directness and atmosphere, that I find is somehow missing from my old monochrome work. Colour adds confusion and it is harder to see the essence of the performer. But I can do things with the scans with C1, that I could never achieve with the grand old LPL.

The LPL and all the rest of the darkroom gear are a reminder of an extremely memorable part of my life, when I go up to the old darkroom.

[Bob G.]

Mike,
Truly some amazing enlarger esoterica! I can see you renting the experience of using the LPL…. Ha!

[Dave Millier]

I had an LPL 6000. Can't remember the exact model, but it was white :-)

My recollection is that head moved up and down on some kind of spring loaded mechanism.

[Charlie Dunton]

Mike, I think you gave an excellent answer to your spot quiz question. I’m 75 and the only VERY cheeky answer I could come up with is “soon it won’t matter”. I haven’t printed film since high school yearbook photography team. But 40 years ago I “inherited” a large Omega enlarger when my father-in-law passed. It found a happy home at a local science museum that taught classes. So, don’t worry about Xander. He’ll find someplace other than the landfill.

[Dave]

You're smart to keep that enlarger. Decent ones are very high priced, due to "supply and demand".

I got a somewhat decent one decades ago at Campus Camera in Kent, Ohio (just down the road from the famous university) and thought I paid a higher price than I should have.

That was when they still had loads of '50s and '60s cameras in the used display case.

The enlarger I bought was missing the safelight filter, so I dug through the old filters they had and found a giant Wratten filter that looked like it would work. (I could barely see the daylight through it!) The filter had to be four to five inches in diameter.

I used an electric soldering iron to cut the filter down to the required size, sanded smooth the sides and it's worked great. I think I only paid $2-3 for the filter.

That enlarger was much nicer than the plastic special by Patterson that I started on.

[Paul Judice]

I would submit that the Durst 138s may have been the best engineered and thought out enlarger that ever existed. It was a floorstanding 5x7" enlarger that had an endless number of accessories. I had one that was fitted with a point light source and register pin carrier for making dye transfer separations. I would love to buy one again (and they pop up on Ebay) but, it's the size a refrigerator. You can learn more about them on the amazing esoteric used gear site/museum Glennview.com.

[Stelios]

I've recently bought an LPL 7700 (along with a Durst F60, a Durst M650 and a beginner enlarger for next to nothing), paired it with a Schneider Componon and I'm off printing in the darkroom I just haphazardly built in my garage (I am lucky), so I am firmly in the section of readers who enjoy reading about these things.

I also enjoy almost everything else!

[John Camp]

I'm proud to say that I had what was probably the worst enlarger ever made. I had just gotten out of the Army and was working on my first commercial newspaper (The Southeast Missourian of Cape Girardeau, Mo.) The paper didn't have a photographer. When they absolutely had to have a picture, a guy from a local photo shop (remember those?) would run out and shoot it. I had a PX-bought Spotmatic and the Army had taught me how to print. I bought some trays, chemicals and the enlarger and started doing photos for the paper. The paper paid me $5 for each photo printed. Anyway, there was a company in the back of photo magazines that sold all kinds of cheap photo crap. You know, like the lens attachment that would snap on the end of your own lens, but had a 45-degree mirror in the end, instead of an opening, with an opening in the side, so you've be shooting at a 90-degree angel to what you apparently were shooting. I think I paid something like $45 for the enlarger, all plastic. But, it was good enough, if not good. When I told the editor that I was going to quit to go back to college for a master's degree, he sent me a list of more than 100 houses that I could photograph for a special section on construction that they ran every year, with all the new houses in the circulation area. I made something like $600 for two days of shooting all over the countryside. Arrive in a cloud of dust, spend ten seconds shooting the house, depart in another cloud of dust. $600 was a big deal in 1968 -- more than a month's pay. I was forever grateful to the guy. Somewhere along the way, and not very far along the way, I tossed the enlarger in the trash.

[Stan B.]

Amazing that NOS enlargers are so exorbitantly priced, while one literally can't give LN enlargers away!

Also, didn't cold head enlargers also cut down on contrast significantly?

[Dan Khong]

I had a simple double condenser LPL 66 enlarger for B&W printing that looked like this:

https://img.aucfree.com/n436020137.1.jpg

Had years of fun until I started using VC papers and changing filters on the head became a hassle. I sold it and bought the Kaiser 6x6 with multigrade head. Dialling the grade on the Kaiser is such a breeze.

[David Brown]

I do not have enough information to disagree with your assessment. Truth be told, I would love to have an LPL VCCE enlarger. However, I have had to “make do” with two Beseler 4x5, one with condenser head, and one with dichroic (which gets used most of the time). I do not need TWO big Beselers, or the adjustable stand for one that’s in the attic. But, just like you, I would hate for my circumstances to change and try to acquire anything near what I already own in the future.

I started darkroom printing with a Testrite enlarger. It was a toy. Upgraded to a hobbyist level Lucky. Bought an Omega 6x6. Still not pro grade. Went through a few B22s on the way. Then an Omega D5, and finally to the Beselers. Given what I have had to use in the past, the Beselers are like driving a Lexus.

[Tom Duffy]

No argument concerning the LPL/Sanders 4x5 enlarger. When I bought one, I was concerned that there was no ability to adjust the lens or negative stage to ensure that they were parallel to the easel. Turns out it was all exactly right from the factory and has remained so for the last 30 years.
Compare and contrast that with my Super Chronmega E, which required a lot of work during setup. Since my main landscape camera was a 5x7, this is the enlarger I used the most. It too is a solid piece of professional gear.
In addition to these enlargers, I still use a Durst A300 35mm only enlarger, which I purchased in 1974. It is absolutely built like a tank and features a very good autofocus system. It was much better than the Leitz focomat that I had used in high school.
Sad to me how much these cost new yet how little money they command used.

[Benjamin Marks]

That LPL was definitely on the "lust for" list. My current/last/unused enlarger was Fred Picker's Zone VI 5x7 enlarger with the dual tube cold light head (blue tube for high contrast, green tube for soft -- all on VC paper of course). I further fine tuned the set up with a "soft" developer and a "hard" one. Prints would get their start in the hard developer until the blacks were well started, and then finish in the soft developer until the greys were where I wanted them. No idea where I got the idea for this, or even if the chemistry was valid. But man, did I love the output of that thing.

No b&w print from an inkjet printer ever came close. Not, I think, because the tech couldn't produce the results, but because there were so many variables to master in the digital realm.

[Terry Burnes]

If film photography is having a renaissance among younger photographers, having a darkroom can't be far behind. This sort of thing seems to happen just when the stock of new and even used equipment has all but disappeared. So LPL having gone digital is likely a sign.

My parents frequently had a darkroom in my youth. I certainly never achieved any sort of mastery of printing but I treasure my time in those darkrooms. The enlarger always stood tall, sort of dominating things. And developing a negative and turning it into a print smacked of alchemy, sort of a dark art, everything bathed in the glow of the safelight. Magic was at work.

Good of you to remind us a bit of all this.

[Earl Dunbar]

This is an appropriate continuation of a conversation I had earlier today with my new-ish BFF, “Hippy Hank”. Hank is a Vietnam vet who, of course, saw a lot of sh!t but is remarkably sane. Later on Hank shot 4x5 as well as smaller formats, including Widelux. And he developed a method of developing by inspection which involved a glass tray and the green safelight mounted below the tray, activated by a foot switch. He even processed 120 by inspection, cutting frames apart as necessqry.

Hank no longer shoots with anything other than a smart phone, but earlier today we were talking film and film cameras, and I could detect the itch getting to him.

I never worked on an LPL - hearing your description makes me wish I had. For my own darkroom I settled on Beseler 45MX, adding a cold light head down the road since I wanted to avoid what Ansel described as “soot and chalk”.

As for the Simmons Omega D series, I used one for a few years in a pro lab and it was pretty much junk. Of course I got used to its clunkiness and the only redeeming feature was a turret lens mount that accommodated 3 lenses - 50, 80 and 135.

I always wanted to make enlarged contact sheets, but never had a carrier with glass - now I would love to do that. The community darkroom here has all Beselers, so maybe I should buy a 4x5 carrier with glass and bring it for printing sessions.

My Beseler now sits unused. Another enlarger I have is a Kodak 4x5. Who knew they made such a piece of gear? I saw it advertised on the local Craigslist and the listing stated if no one bought it it was going to the dump. Price was $20 so I bought it. I couldn’t bear to have it go to the dump IN ROCHESTER! The bellows was shot … and still is. If I ever clean out my basement I’ll build a darkroom and put it back in service.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

A proper dichroic filter system for VC papers is one of the few things that would have really improved my darkroom experience that I never had. I did at least mostly get to use filters above rather than below the lens, though.

I got 16x20 enlarged contact sheets from one of my labs. Seemed to be done in one go on a single sheet of paper, I assume they used an 8x10 enlarger. Paper that big makes them hard to file, doing it in 4 steps in a 4x5 solves that problem, but is 4 times the work. I never actually tried it, and I worked with 4x5 enlargers most of my time in the darkroom. But doing "contact scans" of a whole roll in one pass is why I have 8x10 transparency capabilities in my scanner.

[L. Young]

Best enlarger (at least that was/ is accessible to the average user): De Vere. Ergonomically vastly better than anything made by LPL, built to a significantly higher level of durable precision - better than almost all of the big Durst machines too.

[psu]

I had an Omega D-2 for a while, until I tore down the darkroom and then started using mostly digital cameras. It was fine. I can certainly imagine more refined machines. But the thing was solid.

I eventually sold/gave it to a local friend of mine who was gonna use it to print medium format pictures of trains. But then he had more kids too, and never got around to it as far as I know. 🙂

[Tom Fangel]

Durst Laborator 138 for BW and Simmon Chromega for color
- those were the days!

[Dogman]

The last and best enlarger I owned was the 670 LPL. I felt like I had finally achieved my goal of a well appointed darkroom by then. Nice archival washers, Saunders easel, Rodenstock and Schneider enlarging lenses, etc. Of course I almost immediately started messing around with digital and soon discovered I could make photos without all that stuff cluttering the small space just off the bathroom. The enlarger and etceteras went to a closet for a year or three before I found someone who wanted it all and I gave it away.

Per Vonnegut: "So it goes."

[Omer]

The best enlarger I owned was the Beseler 35 Condenser which cost under $300.00 in the eighties. I paired it with a Nikkor lens and also had a Seagull 11X14 print washer, all now worth triple what I paid.

The Beseler was small enough that it could be used in different orientations. I flipped the column so that it could project on the floor to make much larger prints. Yes, darkroom silver paper printing could be transcendent when printing good images but mostly it was a slog making contact sheets and 5x7 proof prints, most of which were not printed larger. After 16yrs. of processing film and making prints in bathrooms, and then 7yrs. in a shed I burned out and quit photography in 2000. My first digital camera was the first iPhone in 2007.

Two years ago I made a portrait of a niece with her two yr. old son. As I was setting up the scene her mother blithely said as she watched me make settings on my Nikon Coolpix A, “the smartphone is the camera of today,” to which I replied, “yeah well, I’m old style this way.”

Lord, how things change and stay the same.

[hugh crawford]

One might think that enlargers were a nothing new mature technology.
Apparently, one would be wrong.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNr6NKHoDME

Yikes!

[Mark Sampson]

As I noted before, almost all of my enlarger experience has been with various Omega models. But when I lived in the Washington DC area, I used the rental darkroom at the excellent Glen Echo Photoworks; there I tried their LPL enlarger, and quickly realized how good it was.
Now in Tucson with my own darkroom again, I still use my ancient (but hot-rodded) Omega D-II. It's still sufficient for my needs, although I do admire the LPL ofone of my friends, for its quality and ease of use. I'm sorry (but not surprised) to find these fine tools to be orphans now.
"Fine tools contribute to fine work".

[Nige]

I have a 7451 VCCE and a 7700 (VCCE head on it at the moment). What's nice about this combo is they are very similar in operation so moving from one to the other doesn't require much thought.