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  #1  
Old 23rd December 2009, 02:04 PM
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Bronnie Bronnie is offline
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Default Using Ektacolor in bulk

I,ve been trying out the Ektacolor packs from Ag Photographic and , having bought a cheap dishwarmer (£18 from SDS) to use in place of my Rotary Processor which I've decided is too much of a pain , have now got some images -I wont win any shows but thats not the point.

I've put the scans in the 'help' gallery rather than attach them to the post, for those who are thinking about using these chems I offer the following;
- The prints you see are on Supra Endura .
- The chemicals used for these prints had been made up 6 weeks ago, no discoloration of the dev.
- To store the chems I used two 5 Litre petrol cans (They HAVE to have a good seal) Black=Blix, Green = Dev.
-Making up is really easy if youre used to mixing Chemicals.
- developmen was as per the pdf I downloaded. 1 min @92F for Dev and Blix (No stop or prewet)

Compared to using Digital this is EASIER to produce a final print - I have a color analyser (LAbometer £35 off ebay) and after set up get first shot prints, no changes needed for different films unless you are VERY picky.
The cost of the chems was £54 so a 5litre batch is around £11 and I reckon I used a litre so the cost for using as 'one shot' is just over £2 per session !
Not bad . recommended to anyone.
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Old 23rd December 2009, 05:15 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Bronnie, thanks for sharing your experience with us. Sounds as if the key is the throughput. Provided you can have a long enough session each time then you can exhaust the chems in the trays and dumping isn't a waste. Good to see that what remains in the petrol cans has lasted for 6 weeks already.

I'd be interested to hear your findings on the max life of the chems in the cans. Presumably there comes a point when you pour into the trays and it is clear that the prints aren't up to scratch and the chems need dumping but after 6 weeks you're not there yet.

Do you have a colour safelight? Open tray processing in the dark would scare me to death. I must admit that using Jobo drums can be a bit of a pain in terms of the fill, dump sequences and then the drying of the drum before the next print.

Just out of interest what does Kodak say about how many prints a 1 litre tray of dev and blix will process?

Thanks

Mike
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Old 25th December 2009, 11:04 AM
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Default For spme reason quotes dont seem to be working in this post , sorry

I'd be interested to hear your findings on the max life of the chems in the cans. Presumably there comes a point when you pour into the trays and it is clear that the prints aren't up to scratch and the chems need dumping but after 6 weeks you're not there yet.

Do you have a colour safelight? Open tray processing in the dark would scare me to death. I must admit that using Jobo drums can be a bit of a pain in terms of the fill, dump sequences and then the drying of the drum before the next print.

Following an explanation to my long suffering wife as to why Blix stains shirts and trousers so badly I did buy a safelight (it;s a Wotan- expensive but good) its great for BW too as the light level can be adjusted so that the room is quite bright when using monochrome papers- I found the drums really a pain when calobrating as you need to wait so long between each run. I'll use it for film now

Just out of interest what does Kodak say about how many prints a 1 litre tray of dev and blix will process?

Around 15 8x10 per litre, max time in tray for chemicals is recommended as 4 hours-for interest (I must be sad I did a rough costing as follows;
Assume 1 session = 10 prints taken from 3 films
Films and dev costs approx £6 x 3 = £18
10 x 8x10 = £2.40
Chemicals cost = £2

Total = £22.40 i.e a hand finished 8 x 10 costs less than £2.50 AND you get 3 to 4 hours of enjoyment out of it - cant be bad !!! If you can get all the prints from 1 film the price is less than £1.10a print which is cheaper than a lot of digital 8x10 prints


Thanks

Mike
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Old 25th December 2009, 11:13 AM
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Talking 8 x 10 colour

The attached is a scan of an 8 x 10 colour print done last night (total time from neg selection to washed print approx 10 min. I've tried to match the colours of the print in the scan so a little photoshop used.

Its a really rewarding experience.
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Old 25th December 2009, 03:42 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Thanks for that. I am tempted to try out my Nova 4 slot for RA4. It looks as if printing most of a 35mm roll at 5x7 would give me 30 prints per litre and there's just a chance that the Nova would keep a litre fresh enough for say 2-3 days to enable me to do the 30in a relaxed manner then it's dump anyway as the 1 litre is exhausted.

Sounds good

Mike
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Old 26th December 2009, 04:48 PM
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Hi, I'm glad to hear there's still someone doing RA-4 at home since it did seem to me that was kind of going out of fashion these days. I'm doing it myself too lately, it's been a year give or take since I started. The capacity of chemicals stated by Bronnie seems to be in line with my findings although I'm using a third party kit. I have to admit I went a bit beyond the 20 20x25cm (8x10”) just to see what happens and I found out I can reach safely at least 35 increasing a bit the exposure when I see the print starts to lose density. I use to store the chemicals in PVC 1lt. bottles between one session and another topping the liquids with inert gas. Proceeding this way the chemicals keep at least 2 weeks. The unused working solutions topped with gas keep way more than that, a month after mixing are still alive and kicking (I haven't tested further). The 5lt. kit comes conveniently in two separate 2.5lt batches, so no need to mix all at once. I'm working with open trays, I've tried with a drum even with good result but found it too much pain. It's indeed possible to work in total darkness provided to keep everything clean and organized. Surfing the net in search of a simple solution to keep the chems in temperature I found out that is possible to process at lower temps than 25-35°C stated by the kit instructions increasing the development time. So I'm processing at 20-22°C giving 2 full mins development with good results so far (no strange color shifts or casts). I determined the filter pack by trial and error and stuck with that for most of the prints. I'm using my BW enlarger with gel CP filters. At the and I can say the thing can be done really on a limited budget. For the stains I've found a cleaner called Exargent made by Tetenal, just rub the stains with it before washing the clothing. Using working clothes is still the best option. Quoting Bronnie I won't win any shows but I'm quite happy with the results and I feel I have even a margin for improvement.

Cheers, Marty.
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Old 26th December 2009, 06:11 PM
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Nice one Marty , as you sayRA4 printing is a minority pursuit in what is now a minority hobby, but it is great fun. Glad youre having fun and interesting to hear your comments on capacity of the chemicals.
Have you posted any prin
ts on the gsllery ?

Cheers ; Bronnie
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Old 27th December 2009, 11:32 AM
marty marty is offline
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Hi, Bronnie.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bronnie
Glad youre having fun and interesting to hear your comments on capacity of the chemicals.
Thank you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bronnie
Have you posted any prin
ts on the gsllery ?
There ya go:

My first post, in the gallery all the technicalities.

Cheers, Marty.
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Old 27th December 2009, 01:27 PM
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Good fun isnt it
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Old 7th February 2010, 11:22 PM
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I was experimenting with the Kodak RA4 chems that Ag-Photographic sell and find they do indeed work at room temperature (I ran them in my Nova slotty thing at 20C at first and then wound it up to 30C to compare prints). I had the chems in the slotty thing for 9 days without any sign of deterioration - but I do float strips of cling-film on the chems in the slots between use to (a) keep the oxygen away and (b) cut down on the smell ('tho the blix actually smells much better than normal b&w fixer) so I do not know if it is safe to just leave them uncovered for that long.

The developer is actually a developer/replenisher: Ektacolor Developer Replenisher RA/LU which, from my perusal of Kodak datasheets, seems to be the same stuff as sold in N. America as Ektacolor RA Developer Replenisher RT - it has different names in different market areas. Certainly it seems to behave like it from reading reports on RA/RT.

Compared to using at 28-30C I found I needed to dev for 2.5 - 3 mins to get the same highlight detail but it may be possible to expose the print a little more and use a 2 minute dev time. The colour looked good at 2 mins, as did the shadow and middle tones, it was just a little light in the highlights. This suggests there may be scope for some degree of contrast enhancement by developing at 2 mins but I've not investigated that yet, but I now have a standard colour target so I can do a bit of experimenting. It may or may not be relevant that I used Kodak Supra Endura paper - I can't say if such latitude is available with Fuji CA.

So, one thing I have learnt is that RA4 development time may not be as critical as the books suggest - at least, not with this combination of developer and paper. It seems that, within reason, consistency is more important.
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