RA4 Colour Printing

[pentaxpete]

Well< I'll be the Firstthen to post here ! I do most of my own colour printing. I do send holiday photos away to BonusPrint in one of their 'cheap offer'envelopes. I used to use dishes when I did the old Agfa color process which took 15 minutes @68oF to get a print out ( did a few wedding albums like that!) then Kodak brought out the EP2 system at higher temp. 32oF then I got a Nova 16x12" unit and then came the RA4 system at even higher temp. so the times are down to 45 seconds to develop the print,30 secs stop bath, 45 secs Bleach-Fix and 90 secs wash in warm water.
I use Champion developer, make up my own Stop with Acetic Acid and Sodium Sulphite and Blix is from PhotoMart Walthamstow ( CPAC Chemistry). I can do 8 6x4", 4 8x6",2 12x8" and one 16x12" on a Nova 'Multimask'easel which has paid for itself many times over. I have an LPL C7600 pro up to 6x9 format and recently been given a Durst M305 35mm,both with colour heads.Paper is what ever I get CHEEP CHEEP ! I have used them all - 3M,Konica,Agfa,Fuji, Kodak.

[Kevin Caulfield]

Hi Pete. I've just recently started using Tetenal for processing E6 and C41, and for RA4 for printing. I've only had one or two sessions with it so far, but it worked fine, just as the old Agfa kits did. One concern was that my Paterson Auto Colortherm may be a tight fit in my small darkroom (previous printing was in much larger darkrooms) but it fits fine on a board on top of the sink.

[FredWelch]

Hi, it doesn't seem as if there are many of us printing RA4 on here. I too started with dishes, using EP2, but I've been using a Nova for a number of years. When I first started I was allowed to dip the holding tanks with 5litre bottles for chems at the place where I worked. I'm now no longer in the trade so have to buy my own chems.

[Bob]

I started doing some RA4 but have not continued with it lately but I definitely intend to restart soon. I am somewhat colour-blind which does not help (!) but I do have a colour densitometer and find that helps a lot as long as I can find something in the picture that should be neutral grey. Actually, I suspect that shooting a grey-card as the first shot on the roll should be sufficient as long as the colour temperature of the light does not change too much on the rest of the roll. Also, my Durst has a built-in colour analyser but I've read the manual 10 times now and still can't figure out how to use it the way I want...

[FredWelch]

Rob, I've been trying colour analysers for years. Both in my darkroom at work (we all hated them at work), and at home. I've found them to be not a lot of use. Most of the pro hand printers that I know will tell you that "There is only really one way - test, test and test again." I really don't value analysers much.

[Bob]

I never did understand how calibrating against a "test negative" would work very well. What are the chances that the real negative has the same distribution of colour as the test neg? Pretty slim I'd have thought.

Only way an analyser could work as far as I can see is if there is a known neutral-colour item in the shot (white wedding dress, rain cloud etc) and you can calibrate against that. This is what I was trying with the Durst's analyser but all the instructions seem to cover is use of a test-negative which I do not believe in! I can use the densitometer for spot-measuring a grey in the print but it's a bit slow:- print, process, dry, measure grey, adjust filters, repeat - but my limited experience is that once done for one shot, it usually holds for the rest of the roll (as long as the light did not change) so it's not too onerous.

Unfortunately, because of my colour-blindness, I do need some method of measuring the final print: I can usually tell if there is a cast, I just can't usually say which colour it is...

[Mike O'Pray]

Bob, the colourstar 3000 appears to do just what you have said. You get three negs(B&W C41 and E6) for a neutral grey and the machine produces a print from which you take readings which are inputted back into the machine until eventually you get the right readings for neutral grey. The machine is then calibrated for neutral grey. No standard test neg involved.

Sadly the colour star 3000 is no longer made but does very occasionally appear on e-bay.

Mike

[Matt5791]

I enjoy printing colour - still need to practice. I have a wedding to print soon so that will be fun.

However, I would like to point people towards the Kodak excellent RA4 Dev and Blix kits - miles cheaper than Tetenal. It's a shameful plug, but I don't know of any other website to point people too:

http://www.ag-photographic.co.uk/process-ra4-117-c.asp

It's the packaging that makes these kits really useful enabling 4 separate 5L batches to be made up with no need to crack into the next concentrate until you need it.

Matt