Omega 5500 enlarger on eBay - item #147281706770

[YorkshireBloke]

Hi all,

I need therapy...

I'm actually checking out this kit that I don't have room to house, the skills to get the best out of or the time to regularly use...

At the moment... Part time working then retirement is on the cards in the plan-able future (18 months to 3 years) and I am building a home office at the top of my garden...

My use would be 100% B&W for the production of large-ish (11 x 14+") prints of my own work, probably just to display at home.

Mastering the process would be satisfying to me, and I am lucky enough to still be able to learn new things, having changed careers and taken on new challenges even as I got older (66 now)

The forum can help me here

1. Does anyone with their own darkroom still use a shared or community darkroom?

I have come across this with the now closed Aire Street Darkrooms in Leeds - one person I chatted to found the camaraderie and access to support well worth driving (and paying) for.

My learning curve would be steep...

2. Can I canvass opinions on the Ilford Lambda process?

Contributors to the forum have spoken highly of the service, and the prices seem acceptable, for silver gelatin work via a digital negative (totally acceptable to me if the results are on photographic paper).

This does seem to offer almost all the advantages of a home darkroom, with only the full creative control of all parts of the process as a disadvantage.

I do hope the seller gets to close out his clearance - we have messaged and he seems reasonable.

For Forum users who are able to set up and use the kit - fill your boots!

You'll save me diving down a rabbit hole that in a real sense could be a distraction from producing work, not an enhancement...

Robert

 

[Nas]

Most of us might benefit from some sort of therapy but where's the fun in that?

I've used Ilford's printing service some years ago to compare their light jet print to a print output on an Epson photo printer. They were very close but I'm not convinced about the archival life of inkjet prints.

The key thing to remember with Lambda prints is your print is only going to be as good as the quality of the scan you send. Epson have stopped making flat bed scanners and prices of existing stock have shot up. You also need a correctly calibrated computer monitor if you want to avoid the rabbit hole of receiving a print that doesn't match your monitor.

 

[Dave_P]

The Ilford digital prints: the results are great, no worries there. I wouldn’t say it necessarily “offer almost all the advantages of a home darkroom” - for a start it’s not fun! And inevitably if you’re sending off for prints its a bit different to just going and doing it yourself. On the other hand, if you need to reduce say 100 identical large prints, then it’s a comparative doodle.