VI Photo Enlarger

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Vivitar VI Photo enlarger was a modular enlarger designed and made by Vivitar from 1978. It could use a monochrome or color head, and cover formats up to 6x9cm

Vivitar decided to design their own enlarger that looked to solve the problem of heat reaching the negative, and a group of engineers in Inglewood, CA took on the task. Vivitar’s unique solution to the heat problem was to use a “dioptic light source”. The heat from the lamp was effectively insulated by using a "light pipe" made of glass which transmitted the light from the dichroic head to the negative. By having that "light pipe" there were 2 optical components and thus dioptic. The results were very good in regards to heat, but careful alignment was needed to avoid vignetting in larger negatives.
The condenser head has a 2 fixed and 1 movable condenser to provide optimal uniformity for 50 or 80mm lenses. It uses standard bulbs; which can be replaced with LED bulb for Black and White enlargements. It doesn't have a VC filter drawer, and thus they should be placed under the lens.

The enlarger itself is very tall, with a inclined column of about 1.1m allowing enlargements of 32X (768x1152mm) with a 50mm lens. The head moves smoothly, and can be tilted +/- 30° and resetting to the normal position is very easy.

The negative carriers were plastic, and had a groove to keep them flat and allow the user to rotate and align. However, since it was a proprietary design, and hand-made was not possible is was not well received.

References

• [Brochure in high quality] by Peter D'Aprix [[1]]
• Modern Photography’s August 1978 review of the Vivitar VI enlarger
• [Ollinger's Guide to Enlargers]

Links

• [Vivitar Historical Research]: Part 2
• [Vivitar review] on Darkroom Photography - Volume 01 Issue 02 (1979-05)(Sheptow Publishing)(US)