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