Printing Loupe recommendation

T

TMPDave

Member
Can anyone recommend a strong printing loupe. I had a 10x pocket loupe and really had to strain my eyes to see registration. Thank you. If you can tell me the brand and where to get it, I'd aprpeciate it! Thanks!
 
I use one from Betascreen it is mostly use for 4 color printing has filters built in so you can knock out other colors works great.
 
Thanks so much for all the recommendations so far. It has really helped! As I browse through all the options, I wonder what choices I have for loupes with adjustable magnifcation. Thoughts?
 
I doubt there's any variable magnification loupe. Some adjustable USB microscopes have two set points usually at 20x something and 150 or 200x respectively depending on the model. We use Betamag 12x loupes with light and they are more than adequate for the purpose. Very good build quality, achromatic glass, aspherical, reflex coated.
 
akalaray said:
12x wide field Betamag with light. About $100
Click to expand...

The Betamag 12x with light is our most popular magnifier

Beta Industries, the source for printer's loupes

for use in the pressroom for the reasons mentioned in Gordon's excellent article. Briefly mentioned but often overlooked is the eye relief of an optical device. This is the maximum distance that you can comfortably put between your eye and the lens and still get a sharp, undistorted image that fills the eyepiece. The entire Betamag line of 10, 12, and 20x lenses all exhibit extremely long eye relief of about 12 inches. In practice you can place the press sheet on the console and NOT have to bend over and place your nose on the table. This is in contrast to the typical Hastings loupe where the lens must be brought up directly in front of the eye. The ergonomic benefits are substantial.

Color correction is another poorly understood concept in magnifiers for use in the press room. In the bad old days of film, a poorly color corrected magnifier would create color where there was none; on a halftone film. Color fringing of white areas adjacent to black areas indicated poor color correction in the lens. It would be a rare lens that changed the color of a slide due to poor color correction.

Magnification is another area where misconceptions abound. If you cannot see the yellow register mark with your 5x linen tester, it won't look much better with a 10x or even a 20x lens. You need CONTRAST to distinguish a feature from the background. More magnification won't help much. Increasing the contrast and the visibility of the yellow image is best done with COLOR SEPARATION ILLUMINATION. Blue light will be strongly absorbed by the yellow image, appearing nearly black, and the white paper will be rendered bright blue. This is best done with the Beta Color Viewer. Red and green light channels do the same for the cyan and magenta images respectively.

Best regards,
Larry Goldberg
Technical Director
Beta Industries
Color Densitometers, CTP Calibration Systems for Print Quality
 
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