1951 ad for an Omega D-2 enlarger and soft illumination head
Toronto. I first enlarged negatives when in high school. A few years later in Northern Quebec I bought my first enlarger – a very cheap affair labelled as a Federal. The small town I was in had only contact printing paper at the time. Each negative took five minutes or more exposure by the enlarger. Glacially slow! Another line I looked at enviously was that of Durst in Italy.
Magazines and books encouraged me to dream of a better quality enlarger. I had looked long and hard at the Omega line. This all came back to me when George sent me the ad shown here for an Omega D-2 and soft light head. Back home in Southern Ontario, I tried enlarging colour negatives. A friend and I decided to make a soft head for my cheap enlarger. A fluorescent tube became the light source, while two suitable-sized aluminum pans (the top one inverted; the bottom one with a central opening) served as a reflector/lamp housing.
The results were satisfactory but took a painfully long time as we did color balance and exposure to get a decent print. Cheap filters didn’t help with speedy results …. My thanks to George Dunbar for sharing his find from page 142 (last page) of the July 1951 issue of Popular Photography. Years later, after marriage and a move to Montreal, I ended up with a used Durst M35 35mm negative colour enlarger which turned out to be Gilbert Durst’s flagship machine embodying all his innovative design concepts.
A truly wonderful enlarger matching the quality of my M4 camera and Leitz lenses.
