[Leica] V35 height adjustm. & grain focuser

[Christer Almqvist <christer@almqvist.net>]

I thought it was interesting to read what other people said about the
height adjustment of the V35 enlarger column and also about grain focusers,
so I decided to do some testing of my own, after all, the height adjustment
test should only take about a quarter of an hour.

My masking frame is 20 mm thick so I have always had the enlarger head
column raised 20 mm and it has worked fine. I have also tested this out
with a commercial test negative, but this is 'dyed through' whilst the
negative has the silver emulsion on the bottom side. I do not know if this
makes any difference when fixing the correct focus.

For the test I lowered the column adjustment to 16 mm and made a print, and
the repeated the whole thing  with column adjustments at 18mm, 20mm, 22mm,
24mm, and 26mm. I used f/5.6 and enlarged about ten times. (The negative
was a Delta 100 developed in Xtol 1+1 and it is a portrait where you can
count the number of individual eye lashes.) Practically no difference
visible between the prints, not even when I compared the 16 and the 26 mm
versions with the 20/22mm ones.

So I did the test once more, this time at f/2.8 and 16x enlargement. If you
look carefully, then the 20mm, 22mm, and 24 mm print are somewhat sharper
than the other, but not radically.

I asked a friend who is a professional photographer with several books
published and also working for national magazines (Yes, he uses an M6 for
some of this work.) and in advertising, if I should get a grain focuser.
His reply was: 'Won't help you, your Delta 100/Xtol negatives have no
grain.'

So I am back to square one. Well, I think I'll adjust the column height to
22 mm, otherwise all the effort would have been wasted. Or I'll have to
get a grain focuser and work more with HP5 in Rodinal (or is it Rodinol
over there?).