VI Photo Enlarger

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Vivitar VI 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 gorup 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.

References

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

Links

• [[3]] Vivitar Historical Research: Part 2