EASEL, ENLARGING (Pr., Chevalet d'agran dissement, Chevalet d reproduction ; Ger., Vergrosserungs-Stativ) A support to hold the bromide paper during the operation of enlarging. In order to ensure parallelism with the negative in the enlarging camera or lantern, the easel is made to run on rails ; or it is fixed, the lantern or camera being moved instead. The easel may consist simply of an upright board supported by a firm base or crosspieces, but it is a great convenience if it possesses a swing movement, which will permit the correction of vertical lines that are shown as slanting in the negative, through the tilting of the camera when taken. Formerly the worker was content to fasten up the bromide paper with pins ; now many easels are provided with spring clamping bars, which save time and also hold the paper flatter. Another arrangement is to attach to the easel a hinged frame carrying a sheet of glass, this being fastened down over the paper. A illustrates a typical modern enlarging easel, with rising, falling, and swing movements ; while B shows an easel of very solid construction, which, besides allowing for rise and fall and for any degree of swing, may instantly be changed to a horizontal position for pinning the paper, and as easily returned to its former upright position, in which it automatically catches. Some easels are made with a ground-glass focusing screen, so that the projected image may be focused from the back ; these may, or may not, be provided also with a dark-slide to carry the paper. The easel
is preferably painted black ; otherwise, when only a part of the negative is to be enlarged, a good deal of stray light will be reflected from the easel. The white paper used to focus on should preferably be removed, or covered with some thing black, before fastening up the bromide paper. In the majority of cases, however, this may be omitted without any ill result ; but it is imperative if plates are used, as when making enlarged negatives, etc.
It is sometimes necessary in enlarging to correct the distortion in the original negative by swinging the easel out of parallelism. In a typical easel for process work, both a ver tical and horizontal swing can be obtained, and the negative can also be turned in its own plane to any axis. Max Jaffe, of Vienna, has done some remarkable panoramic copying with an easel of this kind, securing pictures with an enormously wide angle by ignoring the original distortion in the negative and correcting it when copying, at the same time joining up the image on one negative to another to secure a large combination negative.