Availability of RA-4 paper

[fophem]

Hello forum members,
It seems to be more difficult to find cut RA-4 paper, at least in Europe. Even in roll, I don't find Fuji paper wider than 30.5cm. Does anybody have some information about that?

 

[brbo]

30,5 x 40,6cm cut sheets.

Look for other threads here, it's been discussed before. If you only read the last two pages of this thread you will find a few pointers...

 

[mshchem]

Plentiful here in the USA. Fotoimpex usually has cut sheets, I just checked nothing much there now??

 

[fophem]

30,5 x 40,6cm cut sheets.

Look for other threads here, it's been discussed before. If you only read the last two pages of this thread you will find a few pointers...

Thanks a lot, I think I'll try the tomcat.ro option.

 

[fophem]

Plentiful here in the USA. Fotoimpex usually has cut sheets, I just checked nothing much there now??

yes almost nothing left. Even worth at Macodirect. I will contact them to see if they plan to sell it again in the future. Photostock in Paris still has some left though.

 

[koraks]

Cut sheet is a 3rd party/after market business. In addition to the sources mentioned, try Nordfoto Versand in Germany. They also cut DPII into sheets. DPII and Maxima are the papers I'd recommend in particular for darkroom/home printing. The other Fuji papers are OK too, but technically, DPII and Maxima really are better.

These papers are being manufactured in massive quantities, still. Think in terms of many millions of square meters annually. The availability issue for home users is mostly because the retail channel isn't very well geared towards us. Retail volumes are very low for the darkroom community, so it's difficult for retailers to keep product on stock.

If you're a somewhat serious color printer, I'd suggest skipping boxes of cut sheet paper since you'll just make yourself dependent on a 3rd party. You never know if the paper they sell you is fresh, if they really cut in the dark as opposed to using a 'safe'light etc. It's more sensible to figure out a way to cut sheets from a roll yourself. It's not necessarily very hard or a lot of work. This allows you to tap into the market of rolls, which tends to give more options/variety, the price per square meter is obviously lower and the chances of getting factory-fresh product are greater.

If you're looking for a retailer of rolls in your area, the best advice I can give you is to use the contact form at originalphotopaper.com, indicate your location/country and that you're looking to buy small quantities of their color paper. The person who receives your email will forward it to your local country office and they should handle your request from there.

 

[fophem]

Cut sheet is a 3rd party/after market business. In addition to the sources mentioned, try Nordfoto Versand in Germany. They also cut DPII into sheets. DPII and Maxima are the papers I'd recommend in particular for darkroom/home printing. The other Fuji papers are OK too, but technically, DPII and Maxima really are better.

These papers are being manufactured in massive quantities, still. Think in terms of many millions of square meters annually. The availability issue for home users is mostly because the retail channel isn't very well geared towards us. Retail volumes are very low for the darkroom community, so it's difficult for retailers to keep product on stock.

If you're a somewhat serious color printer, I'd suggest skipping boxes of cut sheet paper since you'll just make yourself dependent on a 3rd party. You never know if the paper they sell you is fresh, if they really cut in the dark as opposed to using a 'safe'light etc. It's more sensible to figure out a way to cut sheets from a roll yourself. It's not necessarily very hard or a lot of work. This allows you to tap into the market of rolls, which tends to give more options/variety, the price per square meter is obviously lower and the chances of getting factory-fresh product are greater.

If you're looking for a retailer of rolls in your area, the best advice I can give you is to use the contact form at originalphotopaper.com, indicate your location/country and that you're looking to buy small quantities of their color paper. The person who receives your email will forward it to your local country office and they should handle your request from there.

Thanks, that's a lot of valuable information. Indeed using rolls instead of cut paper would be the best thing to do and one of my near future project but I still have to build some kind of equipment to be able to do that.

 

[DREW WILEY]

All kinds of Fuji roll sizes up to 50 inch (125cm) wide are available here in the US. And since most of that is made in the Netherlands to begin with, a comparable selection must be available in Europe too. It just a matter of locating a real distributor.

 

[fophem]

All kinds of Fuji roll sizes up to 50 inch (125cm) wide are available here in the US. And since most of that is made in the Netherlands to begin with, a comparable selection must be available in Europe too. It just a matter of locating a real distributor.

Yes I think I'll have to investigate more than my usual suppliers.

 

[fophem]

Cut sheet is a 3rd party/after market business. In addition to the sources mentioned, try Nordfoto Versand in Germany. They also cut DPII into sheets. DPII and Maxima are the papers I'd recommend in particular for darkroom/home printing. The other Fuji papers are OK too, but technically, DPII and Maxima really are better.

These papers are being manufactured in massive quantities, still. Think in terms of many millions of square meters annually. The availability issue for home users is mostly because the retail channel isn't very well geared towards us. Retail volumes are very low for the darkroom community, so it's difficult for retailers to keep product on stock.

If you're a somewhat serious color printer, I'd suggest skipping boxes of cut sheet paper since you'll just make yourself dependent on a 3rd party. You never know if the paper they sell you is fresh, if they really cut in the dark as opposed to using a 'safe'light etc. It's more sensible to figure out a way to cut sheets from a roll yourself. It's not necessarily very hard or a lot of work. This allows you to tap into the market of rolls, which tends to give more options/variety, the price per square meter is obviously lower and the chances of getting factory-fresh product are greater.

If you're looking for a retailer of rolls in your area, the best advice I can give you is to use the contact form at originalphotopaper.com, indicate your location/country and that you're looking to buy small quantities of their color paper. The person who receives your email will forward it to your local country office and they should handle your request from there.

About the DPII I've read that it is not suitable for LED cold head since it was sensitised for laser light digital imagers. I find that strange but I can't tell if it's true or not, I've never tried that paper.

 

[koraks]

About the DPII I've read that it is not suitable for LED cold head since it was sensitised for laser light digital imagers. I find that strange but I can't tell if it's true or not, I've never tried that paper.

Yes and no. All Fuji paper is made for digital exposure. It still works for optical enlargements, too, though. I use it all the time; many different papers, too. I've used Crystal Archive, C.A. Supreme, C.A. Supreme Digital, DPII - they're all 'digital' papers (the emulsions are all the same, too) and they all enlarge optically just fine. Same with Kodak Royal Digital (no longer manufactured) which was also very firmly a 'digital' paper and enlarged optically just fine. With Endura it's never clear whether it is/was optimized for digital, although you can probably safely assume that all Endura paper made since about 2005 was optimized for digital as well. There's a bit of crossover in these 'digital' papers if you print them optically but you're unlikely to ever notice it. Here's some more info on the 'digital' RA4 papers and what it means for optical enlargement: https://tinker.koraks.nl/photograph...look-at-kodak-and-fuji-digital-ra4-crossover/

Long story short; don't worry about it as it's a marginal issue. Just ignore the whole thing and print on whatever papers you want to try.

 

[fophem]

Yes and no. All Fuji paper is made for digital exposure. It still works for optical enlargements, too, though. I use it all the time; many different papers, too. I've used Crystal Archive, C.A. Supreme, C.A. Supreme Digital, DPII - they're all 'digital' papers (the emulsions are all the same, too) and they all enlarge optically just fine. Same with Kodak Royal Digital (no longer manufactured) which was also very firmly a 'digital' paper and enlarged optically just fine. With Endura it's never clear whether it is/was optimized for digital, although you can probably safely assume that all Endura paper made since about 2005 was optimized for digital as well. There's a bit of crossover in these 'digital' papers if you print them optically but you're unlikely to ever notice it. Here's some more info on the 'digital' RA4 papers and what it means for optical enlargement: https://tinker.koraks.nl/photograph...look-at-kodak-and-fuji-digital-ra4-crossover/

Long story short; don't worry about it as it's a marginal issue. Just ignore the whole thing and print on whatever papers you want to try.

Thanks again. Just arrived on Photrio and already so much great informations. I will for sure take a look at your website and try the DP2.

 

[koraks]

try the DP2.

That's the main thing! Have fun with it, it's a great paper.
If you're looking for even better archival stability, try Maxima. Smallest roll size is 40cm, but it's hard to get since the production runs are very infrequent. There's sadly little market demand for this paper, which is a damn shame because frankly I feel every fine arts color photographer should be printing on this paper. Entirely my subjective opinion, of course...

 

[fophem]

That's the main thing! Have fun with it, it's a great paper.
If you're looking for even better archival stability, try Maxima. Smallest roll size is 40cm, but it's hard to get since the production runs are very infrequent. There's sadly little market demand for this paper, which is a damn shame because frankly I feel every fine arts color photographer should be printing on this paper. Entirely my subjective opinion, of course...

Yes, I definitely have to find a way to use paper rolls.

 

[koraks]

Yes, I definitely have to find a way to use paper rolls.

It doesn't have to be complicated. This is the setup I used for quite some time: https://tinker.koraks.nl/photograph...box-cutting-ra4-color-paper-sheets-from-roll/
I now 'upgraded' to conceptually the same thing, but it's just built together from wood. Apparently it was a commercial product at some point; nothing more than a roller cutter, a set of guides and a rod in a pair of simple bearings. You pull the paper from the roll and cut it to length using a guide.

Even more user-friendly are the automated paper dispensers that used to be commonly used in commercial darkrooms, but most of these have been scrapped 20-25 years ago. The few remaining ones are generally in the hands of people who won't part with them until the day they die, and if they do, they probably fetch insane prices by now.

 

[fophem]

It doesn't have to be complicated. This is the setup I used for quite some time: https://tinker.koraks.nl/photograph...box-cutting-ra4-color-paper-sheets-from-roll/
I now 'upgraded' to conceptually the same thing, but it's just built together from wood. Apparently it was a commercial product at some point; nothing more than a roller cutter, a set of guides and a rod in a pair of simple bearings. You pull the paper from the roll and cut it to length using a guide.

Even more user-friendly are the automated paper dispensers that used to be commonly used in commercial darkrooms, but most of these have been scrapped 20-25 years ago. The few remaining ones are generally in the hands of people who won't part with them until the day they die, and if they do, they probably fetch insane prices by now.

I've just read your web page. Great, that's just the kind of informations I was looking for.

 

[koraks]

Excellent, good to hear! Have fun, and keep printing!!

 

[fophem]

Excellent, good to hear! Have fun, and keep printing!!

Thanks for all the great informations found on your web site and on the excellent YouTube video you made.
I´ve just ordered a roll of Maxima. Next step for me will be using minilab chemicals instead of regular kits.

 

[koraks]

I´ve just ordered a roll of Maxima.

Hurrah! I'm sure you'll love it.

 

[fophem]

Yes I´m sure too. I’m just wondering about the contrast. It’s supposed to be pretty high.

 

[koraks]

All RA4 paper is currently quite high in contrast - but so is/was Endura. You could use pre/post flashing to limit contrast, or just shoot low-contrast scenes and shoot a film that isn't too punchy to begin with (e.g. Portra 400 or 800).

 

[fophem]

Yes flashing is what I do most of the time. Also adding some sodium sulfite in the CD helps but I‘m usually not so pleased with the results. Masking would be the next step but I guess I’m a little too lazy…

 

[DREW WILEY]

I appreciate higher contrast. In fact, I've had to make more contrast-increase masks for RA4 printing than contrast-decrease ones. That was mostly related to prior Portra 160VC printing. Now that Ektar has arrived, I need to make masks far less often. Masking is also good for tricky color correction purposes beyond what flashing and simple colorhead balance tweaking can realistically provide; but that kind of thing is a more advanced skill. It's best to learn basic unsharp contrast masking first.

The sodium sulfite added to developer trick barely did a thing for me contrast-wise; but it did muddy up the shadows and badly skewed the color balance.

 

[fophem]

Yes the sodium sulfite never gave good results for me too. As for the various masking technics, I don´t have a proper registering system and since most of my RA-4 prints are made out of 35mm negatives I never achieved something good enough to my eyes. But yes, I have to experiment more in that direction, and not only for contrast purpose. I’m sure I will find very usefull informations on Photrio!

 

[DREW WILEY]

One can learn a general outline of masking without special registration gear; but it's hard to do it repetitively or well without a punch and register system. I did my own early experimentation with a 35mm slide punch and matching pin-registered Gepe glass slides mounts, which were commonly available back then, and can still sometimes be found. But sheet film was used for the masks themselves all along, just trimmed down after development. That phase was very brief. I soon acquired far more serious 4x5 gear.

But masking is really for sake of improving your color prints. You should try to optimize the right film and paper combinations by themselves, and get to first base first. Fortunately, Kodak offers multiple kinds of color neg film, differing from one another in contrast and level of hue saturation.