Color analyser result transfer to enlarger

Three (to add to PE's good advice)

1. Expose a frame showing a gray card illuminated by the same light as your subject at the beginning of each roll or each new scene.
2. Use that as your analysis target.

Mainecoonmaniac said:

I'd like to be that good

But I find some analyzers get "cosine error" I think it's called. An error where if I make a recording of a color on the center of the easel then make the reading towards the edge for the same color and density and it ends up is wrong. :confused:

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You are absolutely correct!

Off axis readings are quite suspect and often are quite wrong. Method 2 above is an attempt to damp this out, but introduces other problems.

PE

ic-racer said:

Three (to add to PE's good advice)

1. Expose a frame showing a gray card illuminated by the same light as your subject at the beginning of each roll or each new scene.
2. Use that as your analysis target.

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Also correct.

In fact, use of a gray card can help measure cosine error of your meter.

PE

First make a perfect print without analyzer.

Second make an analysis of grey scale or space between frames.

Place second frame in enlarger and place probe in same position, grey or no image, and change enlarger filtration to get zero.

Change brand of film or sometimes even batches, and you start again.

My experience has been the emulsions change little, but the film base changes which is why I used the space between frames.

Years back, I would buy a brick at a time and never need to change color balance. A contact sheet will help with slight mis exposures.

I know wedding pros who bought thousands of rolls at a time and the whole group shared them and the all went to the same printer. Bang bang things were always right with no fooling around.

My Paterson like yours has been in a closet for 30 years. Never could figure it out and I have two 3 color 3 bulb enlargers. I use my Omega as described as above.

The whole trick is to measure the same color or black ( between frame) every time. All flesh is not the same, neither is blue sky, or green grass. So you are left with a grey scale you carry or just buy film in batches and wing it. Now color film needs to be exposed to the right color temp light or you need to filter it. Overcast, shade, early or late daylight, mid day sun, tungsten, aluminum and white flash reflectors are all different. Use the grey or printing is a nightmare.

I have found the best things to do to make RA4 printing easy, i.e., not having to constantly change color filtration settings and exposure time, are:

- stick to one or two, maybe three films and develop them yourself in a consistent manner
- use the same paper (but different sizes of the same paper may have different emulsions)
- note the M, Y, and exposure time settings for the limited number of film/paper combinations
- adjust exposure time based on the square of the distance between the lens and paper

Since doing this, I have never done a test print. Sometimes a second print needs to be done to correct for different exposure/lighting situations.

I got an analyzer as part of an enlarger deal but have had no use for it.

I have said it before, but I'll say it again:

Thank you all for your thoughts, ideas and knowhow.

I tried the other day to do a colornegative ...........

And it was a utterly disaster with colors more strange than what I saw as a young man in my inabriet states after use of different substances

No worries, I'll be back

And this time the picture will look like something not from a nightmare

sidewind said:

I tried the other day to do a colornegative ...........

And it was a utterly disaster with colors more strange than what I saw as a young man in my inabriet states after use of different substances

No worries, I'll be back

And this time the picture will look like something not from a nightmare

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It isn't easy at the start. My first attempt was a print of the manneken pis statue in Brussels and it came out green.

Compared to B&W first attempts at colour were disastrous in my case

pentaxuser

sidewind said:

Hi all
I'm a newbee in color work, my first colorfilm I developed this juni, and I am now getting ready to make color pictures.
I have made dryruns using the analyser, and pretty consistent I get this result:

Exposure time 13-14 sec.
Cyan 15
Magenta 8
Yellow 7

Now I just need to figure out how to translate that to settings on my enlargers which are LPL c7700 and Durst M605.

Does anybody have a good explanation, or actual experience ?

Greetings
Soren Hansen
Denmark

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Hi... I see your plight.. without being rude to the commentary on here. The advice given is fundamentally wrong. I will do a demonstration video when I find time and send you a link to view the video.
There is zero correlation between the numbers on the analyser and the filtration dial numbers. Or any transposition of the numbers etc.

I’m not going to get into how it’s done by typing on here.. it’s complex to explain but simple to do.

Terance Smith said:

Hi... I see your plight.. without being rude to the commentary on here. The advice given is fundamentally wrong. I will do a demonstration video when I find time and send you a link to view the video.
There is zero correlation between the numbers on the analyser and the filtration dial numbers. Or any transposition of the numbers etc.

I’m not going to get into how it’s done by typing on here.. it’s complex to explain but simple to do.

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Ps... With the exception of Pentax user... as I said simple to demonstrate but hard to explain in type.

Terance Smith said:

Ps... With the exception of Pentax user... as I said simple to demonstrate but hard to explain in type.

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Thanks for that. One of the hazards of any forum correspondence is that in the end it all becomes too much and confuses the OP However the other hazard is that often we never get to know if the OP ever managed to get to a proper print or maybe simply abandoned RA4 printing and indeed he may have both abandoned RA4.

What we do know if that he hasn't been seen since 2017 so he may have figured it all out or has been lost to RA4 . However a demo video would be very useful for anyone trying RA4 who has bought an analyser as he did. There will hopefully be countless more questions on RA4 and it would be nice to be able to refer future inquirers to such videos

pentaxuser