Enlarger!

I had pretty much given up on the idea of having my own darkroom. I don't want to spend much money on one and that's pretty much the only option there is. The one given to me by my dad's friend is a Vivitar. But I couldn't find much info on it and the info I did find was dismal. The other day, my dad came home and said, "look what I brought home for you." I looked around the house and couldn't find anything, I was thinking it might be a changing bag, since I was talking about needing one. I went outside and saw this big black thing sticking out of the back of my dad's truck bed. It was a Beseler 23cII Dual Dichro XL enlarger. So I was immediately stoked because I recognized Beseler from school, but I was sorta intimidated because I realized it was a color enlarger.

I then went online trying to find a manual. The only stuff I could find cost 10 bucks and off of ebay. I was willing to order them, but I decided to scour google and try Flickr. It's really amazing how easy it is to obtain stuff off the internet. I went to a film group on flickr and found a discussion about Beseler manuals, so I emailed the guy and he gave me access to a ftp (whatever that is). The manuals were good, but I couldn't download them, and the PDF's I made of the images were small and cut off words. Whatever, I thought, it's better than nothing.

Today I was searching stuff on the enlarger and I actually stumbled upon PDFs of the Beseler enlarger manuals at darkroompro.com

The enlarger itself is pretty dusty, but in good condition. I plan on thoroughly dusting it and keeping it under a trash bag while not in use. One problem is, that my house is pretty dusty in itself. I live right next to railroad tracks.

The enlarger came with a timer, color analyzer and some other box thing. And a 50mm lens, I think...the one you use for 35mm film.