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Old 14th February 2020, 04:02 PM
John King John King is offline
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Talking B&W print on RA4 Paper

I have been playing again and GoodOldNorm sent me an offcut selection from C41 colour films that were plain base only. Using these as the base filtration in my LPL enlarger and jiggling the filters in the head I have managed to print a reasonable B&W image onto RA4 Paper. It took about 5 test strips to get there. The eventual colour head filtration was 15 Cyan, 50 Magenta and 40 Yellow, and the paper was Kodak Endura from a roll.

The illumination is quite dark on the board and for an A4 size print the exposure was 15.7secs @ F5.6. The attachment was from a scanned straight print with no burning in, either before development or after it had been scanned. It isn't something I will do regularly, but I have a few B&W negs that I think will respond well, and may be better than on conventional B&W Paper.
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Old 14th February 2020, 04:39 PM
Terry S Terry S is offline
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I'm totally in favour of experimenting John, but can you explain a little bit more on what you hope to achieve and how 'a few B&W negs' '...will respond well, and may be better than on conventional B&W Paper'?

If you're not going to be incorporating any colour, I'm wondering why you are using colour paper etc.

Terry S
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Old 14th February 2020, 05:33 PM
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GoodOldNorm GoodOldNorm is offline
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Good to know you succeeded, thank you for sharing your results.
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Old 14th February 2020, 05:50 PM
John King John King is offline
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Default Printing on RA4

Some of the negatives have never responded well to conventional B&W despite several attempts to do so (Including the one) The contrast was very high and I suspected that printing them on RA4 may just work. Not exactly what I hoped for, but better than on Multigrade.

I have my NOVA on for most days I am printing, so if I have B&W I want print this saves changing over to dishes and using mono developer for a few prints. I can print a couple of B&W's as well. Apart from that it would be so very easy to print a sepia toned print as well. Or a copy of a chlorobromide paper (warm tone) or the other way a cool tone paper just by a tweak of the filtration dials.

Apart from that I wanted to prove to myself again that it could be done. Also taking everything into consideration RA4 developer for a Kodak Kit (20L) and the paper bought on a roll is probably a whole lot cheaper in comparison to B&W because it is bought in bulk, but remains usable for a very long time.

I have yet to work out the full price comparison, but out of an 80m Roll of 12" wide paper, in theory I can get 195 sheets of 12x16. As for the developer/blix I replenish at a rate of 10cc of working solution per each area of 80sq ins so each 12 x 16 will be replenished with 24cc.

I have had problems in the recent past with the paper being fogged, but these seem to be down to a fault with the paper, not me and it is now all working well.

Last edited by John King; 14th February 2020 at 06:07 PM.
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Old 14th February 2020, 06:01 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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It looks pretty good, John. On the few occasions I tried to print a C41 neg onto b&w paper i.e. the opposite of your experiment, I found that I had low contrast with greyish highlights which looks to be the opposite of what you got in your picture on RA4. If anything the white wall but only the white wall looks too white without the texture you normally get with walls

Mike
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Old 14th February 2020, 08:28 PM
John King John King is offline
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Yes I agree Mike. This negative was one of a series taken in York some time ago (2012). They have always been too contrasty to print on multigrade without degrading the shadows, even with split contrast printing. But this is better than anything I managed on M/Grade.

It may be my imagination but the film used was Agfa100 developed in Rodinal. A B&W print showed far more grain than the original RA4 A4 print would suggest.

The RA4 paper may actually have a wider dmax than B&W paper, I simply don't know but more prints will tell. A problem with burning in on RA4 paper, either with colour negs or B&W you run the risk of shifting the colour balance in those areas. These may be difficult to correct. A bit of a balancing act on a knife edge.
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Old 14th February 2020, 10:18 PM
Mike O'Pray Mike O'Pray is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John King View Post

A problem with burning in on RA4 paper, either with colour negs or B&W you run the risk of shifting the colour balance in those areas. These may be difficult to correct. A bit of a balancing act on a knife edge.
Yes I have only tried burning in with a colour neg on RA4 as a colour print once. It was a person's face that had somehow seemed underexposed when the rest of the picture was OK so all I did was to leave the filtration alone and make a hole in a card to burn in the face.

I felt much less confident that I do with b&w print burning. The extra exposure was remarkably short and I always had a feeling that things were going to go wrong but it worked reasonably well but I'd hate to try and transform a colour print in the way that good b&w printers can seemingly transform a b&w print


Mike
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