Elwood

We have an Elwood 8x10 enlarger at Waterford that up until this morning was sitting upside-down in a storage closet. I decided I was tired of thinking about setting it up, so today I did.

It's about 8 feet tall and looks like a rocket ship. I believe it's from the late '40's.

Miraculously all of the parts to put it together and make it work were actually there, it even has a 300mm Schneider enlarging lens which is very sharp.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning it up, making a table for the easel, putting on the lens and made 4 20x24 prints.

There is quite a bit of fall-off toward the edges, and I'm not sure I'm happy with any of the prints, but it was a pretty amazing thing to be enlarging an 8x10 negative. It was incredibly sharp. Possibly the sharpest enlargement I've ever made. I can't wait to shoot some new images and do some more printing.

I have an idea to make a digital center-graduated filter to place in the light chamber. I also picked up some glare-free glass to make a new glass negative carrier. I want to print these full-frame with a thick black border, and the regular negative carrier won't let me.

Pics of it tomorrow. I was too busy having fun today to even document it.