Having decades ago made a homebrew kludge to enlarge Minox 8x11mm frames that wasn't all that good or user friendly, Ye Olde Photographer began scouting ePrey for a suitable "ENLA head." These are a clever device that replaces the enlarging lens on a bigger enlarger. The bigger enlarger supplies the physical support and the light source. The accessory head typically contains an additional condenser lens, a focusing helical, and an enlarging lens of fairly short focal length with an adjustable aperture. In addition there is some sort of negative carrier to hold the film and frame the image.

YOP got lucky and scored a unit made by Mamiya for use with negatives from their 16mm subminiature still cameras way back when. He paid more than he wanted to, but it appears to be in good condition and useable. In addition, old movie camera lenses which might offer a suitable lens for a homebrew version are now apparently hot items. Such glass is not only used for CCTV cameras, but there is a global mega-industry out there making adapters to use said lenses on assorted and sundry interchangeable lens mirrorless digital cameras. As such, there are few at giveaway prices (as YOP had hoped!) The native frame dimensions are 10x14mm, but that can work as is, or if problematic, YOP plans to make a smaller mask to use with the somewhat smaller Minox frame.

The remaining thing to be addressed was mounting the little goodie on YOP's Omega B-8 enlarger. The typical unit mounts in an M39 thread, which alas, was not among the current accessories here. Fortunately among the accumulated Omega accessory gizmos that are here, there was a spare flat plate lens board with a 50mm diameter unthreaded hole. YOP fairly easily cobbled together a small aluminum plate to fasten over the 50mm hole, attached via a pair of #4-40 screws normally used to mount some sort of lens cone. We procured a 39mm mounting flange via the big auction site and VIOLA! We now have a dedicated assembly that can slide in or out to interchange with the regular enlarging lenses.

Initially a quick look at an image projected to about 5x7 inches appeared promising and in February 2017, while printing some 35mm shots, we did a print from a Minox frame. It was a quickie, but really wasn't bad at all.