Patrick
Hello, I recently bought a lovely Durst 138 enlarger, which is fitted with an Agfa Lavako condenser colour head. I was very surprised when I later realised that there is hardly any information about this head to be found online. I also find the information and tables in the "Durst Laboratory Book" rather vague.
Does anyone here have any experience with this piece of kit? In particular, I’m wondering how to adjust the height of the head correctly, especially when printing from large-format negatives (this is supposed to control the spread of light across the negative). The tables state, for example, “between 0 and 6”, although there are only 10 different settings. I’m also wondering how to interpret the colour filter scale: It ranges from 0 to 100, but you can slide out an additional filter to achieve extra-strong filtration. For example, how should one calculate the equivalence with the Durst 130M scale (for contrast control of B&W paper): based on the 1–100 scale, or 1–200?
martinjangowskide
Hello!
The LAVAKO is simply an attachment for the Durst condenser head. The holes on it are designed for the Agfa colour mixing head (which is intended for 6x9). However, this has such significant drawbacks (these days) that I doubt anyone would choose to use it voluntarily anymore. At least mine had a high-voltage lamp and filters that faded. So I took it off and replaced it with a Meopta 3-head with a 6x6 mixing box. In principle, any 6x6 colour mixing head will fit on it; the screw-up function is for fine-tuning the illumination (you can also adjust the original opal lamp). Normally, it doesn’t make any real difference...
Martin
