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Aristo Cold Light on a DII for 6x6
Should I go Cold or stick with my old condenser head on a Omega DII? Any good suggestions what cold light to get?
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Huge subject with many subjective answers.
Many folks will tell you that the masters (or most of them in the early to mid-twentieth century to current) used cold lights. There are explanations aplenty for this you can find with a search for the topic, either within this site, or just Googling some related key words or phrases. I use one, the Aristo V54, and have posted on APUG a number of times about it, as have others.
One key word to search by is "Callier Effect. (no relation ) I just Googled that phrase and found plenty to read.
Good luck!!
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Unless dust is a problem and the condenser works fine I would not change. If you have never used a diffuse light source, that might be a reason to try it. Realize coldlights have a host of potential problems probably inversely related to how much money you spend 
If I were to make a recommendation and you are planning on multigrade B&W printing I'd get a diffuse dichroic head.
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I like my Arista Hi-D head in my D-II. It's not too expensive new with a V-54 bulb that can be used with multigrade papers, and not too hard to find used. It has a heater circuit for fairly consistent exposures, but I use it with a Metrolux, which is even more consistent. It's very bright, which is handy for printing big. For small prints, exposure times can be quite short, which is good if you have a compensating timer that can time accurately in 1/10ths of a second, but you might want to used an ND filter without a compensating timer for longer exposure times.
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David makes a good point about small enlargements and short times. I also have a variable power control (not sure what the right name is - maybe variac?) that allows me to dial down the intensity so I'm always using the best lens aperture at reasonable times. I bought it from Aristo some years ago for less than $100 US.
To David - do you find yourself using filters on the low end of the scale, as I mention in my post?
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l have a d3v and both the condensers ( that i have used for 20 years )
and an aristo head like david's .. i also have the dimmer switch george mentions.
cold lights don't really have to many problems, but you do have to process your film
a bit differently if you want to use a cold light head. if you are used to processing
you film on the "thin" side you will have very short enlarging times. over develop your film
10-30% and you will have no problems with your cold light source.
have fun!
john
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Even though I work very hard at keeping my darkroom very clean and dust free, what dust was around seemed always to be on the negative that I was printing. So I bought an old Aristo cold light on ebay and fitted it to my DII, which greatly reduced the need to spot prints. After using the old one long enough to convince myself that I liked printing with cold light I purchased a new Aristo cold light that came with the V54 bulb, and have never looked back. As others have mentioned, the light is pretty bright and made for short exposures. My solution was to add some translucent plastic to my printing filters (I split grade print) which subtraced about a stop of light from the exposures, giving me reasonable times at middle apertures. When I take the printing filters/diffusion material out of the light path to compose or focus, I get full illumination. My exposures are consistent from print to print, and I have not experienced any of the other problems cited by other posters. In short, purchasing a cold light was a good investment for me.
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