About a year and a half ago I wrote about my acquisition of Leitz Focomat IC and 2C enlargers. That’s right … the holy grails baby! Right? I wrote about this in an entry entitled My Darkroom … Opportunity or Excess? A lot more time than expected has gone by, but I thought it would be entertaining to bring you up to speed on where I am regarding these two babies. Here is part of what I wrote before:
“I now have sitting in my darkroom what many consider the King (2C) and at a minimum, the Crown Prince (1C) of enlargers … the Leicas of enlargers! And of course, no diffusion color heads and none of the convenience I love so much! And yeah, my mighty Devere is still here (with diffusion color head) and it’s not going anywhere thank you.
So what the $%^$&^@? Is this opportunity or complete and foolish excess? I have to go out and buy some damn VC filters for starters! I’ve never spoken about darkroom GAS before and had never experienced it. Was I now? To be completely honest, I don’t know. Even worse was this just another Covid-19 purchase like so many people have made? Or was I falling under a magic spell cast by elves from Wetzlar past? It’s known that many have succumbed to their hypnotic siren calls … myself included. Could I resist their charms now?
So now I feel I need to write about this, to express myself, even if none of the answers exist yet. Will the truth finally emerge? I eagerly await and I stand ready to be judged.
In the meantime it’s going to take a little time to sort things out. I can see that I will probably need to extend my enlarging table to handle three heavy beasts, and I need to get a few missing parts and another Zone VI timer (none of which grow on trees). I’ll let you know how it goes … but if anyone has any thoughts I’d love to hear from you!”
Shortly thereafter I wrote an entry called The Focomats are Making Their Presence Known … Am I Going Down the Rabbit Hole? Here’s part of what I said:
“Now for the really fun part, getting a few missing pieces and figuring how to use these beasts as they were meant to be used. I finally managed to get instruction booklets for each enlarger, but of course they are for older models and don’t provide the most “how to”. I think the IC will be more straightforward and I found an interesting YouTube video on the 2C. Unfortunately the person while looking very knowledgeable is speaking Chinese. I am sure it would have been helpful but $#%@^&*! Then, I couldn’t get the housing that holds the 60mm and 100mm lenses to shift positions for use; the mechanism was jammed. Again #@$%^$#@%. After taking things apart I found that a tiny, tiny, cylindrical bearing was jammed and one was missing. Yet another $%#^%$^ moment! I needed my neighbor’s help again. Without his help the remaining bearings would certainly fall out and scatter to who knows where (well a few did, but I was lucky to track them down).
Only those pesky Wetzlar elves could have designed such a thing (they had a reason for everything they did, didn’t they?), and even though I was able get things working again sans the missing bearing, deep down I knew it might not be right. I mean it seems to be working, but it’s not Leitz ultimate perfection, is it.
That damn tiny part is on my mind. Perhaps I am losing all sense of reality because I have begun to see if I can locate or fabricate one if necessary @#$%^&!
I’m also beginning my hunt for the missing negative masks I will need, but think I might have a line on some new ones if necessary from Kienzle in Germany. And then there are two tiny knurled screws to hold a light bulb socket in place to illuminate the enlargement indicator scale and the red filter that goes underneath the lens. Why not be a completest? After all, this is a Leica isn’t it? Kienzle is known for supporting these wacky things as well as making their own fine autofocus enlargers. I have communicated with them and we will see that they have to say.
I know it’s all worth it, right … or am I beginning to slowly lose my mind? Someday I hope to know.”
Ok, let’s fast forward shall we?
Well, I finally contacted Kienzle. There weren’t any issues with the 1C, but I needed a number of parts for its bigger brother. And of course I needed to get the VC filters. No problem except trying to communicate with Kienzle concerning the damn tiny, tiny, cylindrical bearings and one or two other little parts which I can’t remember what they were for. They had to scavenged from other enlargers and their cost reflected that %$^&@$! The other parts I needed were manufactured by Kienzle … the under the lens red filter and the negative masks for 35mm, 2 ¼, 6×7 and 6×9. OK, I just wanted to be prepared or be a completist.
All the parts arrived and I was finally able to get everything installed. Then I got diverted by a few things that can happen when you work and have about twenty other things going on in your life like running a photographic collective. No problem, I finally got back to the enlargers only to realize that the autofocus system in the 2C was shall we say, not focusing as it should #@$%^! I had manuals for both enlargers and was able to figure out how to get the IC to focus and stay that way as you raised or lowered the enlarging head. The 2C wasn’t so simple and the Leitz manual was fairly useless. It was easy to figure out as with the IC, that by adjusting the focusing helical the lenses were screwed into that you could focus them for a given height. The problem was moving the head up and down. Solving this mystery turned out to be a bit of a process. First I remembered that a new friend of mine in the UK had a 2C. Surely he could be of help. After a Zoom session we figured out that a small knob on the right side of the enlarger was disengaged. Nowhere could I find any mention of this part! Because it was disengaged, the cams on the left side of the enlarger that control focus as you move the enlarger head up or down were not fully engaged. For now I only care about focusing with the 100mm lens, as my 35mm work will be handled by the 1C. Eventually I will get to the 60mm lens but I can only take so much drama at one time! The so-called “dolphin” shaped cam that works with the 100mm lens (yes it is shaped like a dolphin!) wasn’t fully engaged. Now it is!!! Thanks Gary!!!
Ok, baby steps. Still not there yet. I had to start scouring the Internet for clues. First, I found a thread that discussed this problem. Thankfully it was in English! I read and reread it but couldn’t fully make sense of it. Then I found a manual put together be a user that was so much better than anything Leitz published. Unfortunately it was written in German. No problem …Google Translate to the rescue … sort of. Then I located a site that discussed my problem in Japanese. Got that translated too. The trouble with machine translation is that it’s not perfect so you have to do the best you can. In any case, with all three documents in hand … well actually on my laptop … I went downstairs to my darkroom and was able to make some sense of things. Success was achieved after some fiddling around with the dolphin shaped cam and its fine tuning gizmo that could only be accessed by first loosening the cam’s three large screws and then moving the head up and down to make it accessible for adjustment with the tiniest of jeweler’s screw drivers.
A couple of hours later and it seemed to work! Then the next day I decided to do it over because I felt the lens helical was unscrewed too much. I fixed this by changing the setting of the vertical adjustment ring at the bottom of the enlarger column to where it should have been in the first place based on the height of my easel. Then I put a couple of drops of oil in all of the marked lubrication holes in both enlargers. Finally I windexed the 2C’s glass negative carrier.
I think I’ve almost made it to the finish line. Now, all I have to do is make some prints and see if it was worth all the effort! I’ll let you know how it goes.
Oh, and by the way … my 2C now goes by the name Flipper (for those of you old enough to remember, otherwise look it up on the net).
Stay well,
Michael