Color Printing RA-4 Yes/No? How do folks print today

[mshchem]

I'm curious about this. Seems to be very little interest. I have printed RA4 a lot in the past. I've been wondering is this still happening?

 

[mshchem]

I've been messing around with RA4, first time in a couple years. With scanning, not sure anyone still practices wet color prints.

 

[sillo]

I'm doing it. Was working with open trays at room temp, which wasn't too bad at all. Recently got an amazing deal on a nova slot processor so working on getting that set up now.

 

[mshchem]

I'm doing it. Was working with open trays at room temp, which wasn't too bad at all. Recently got an amazing deal on a nova slot processor so working on getting that set up now.

Great, please post your results. I'm thinking RA4, non-commercial printing is nearly extinct. Someone must still be, or at least still buying boxes of Fujifilm CA paper. I suspect that the EU and UK may be more likely to still print color. The slot processors are genius.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Since COVID started up I have not traveled much, just Yosemite, New Orleans and Yellowstone April May 2020 and stayed put since. Other than visiting relatives. So I am not taking enough color photographs to need to get back in the darkroom. I just send it off to Samy's when I finish a roll and look at the print. Eventually we will get so some new normal, but not today. Vaxxed and Boosted.

 

[mshchem]

We had two great shops, 1 in Cedar Rapids, PhotoPro, had great lab people. I used their services, I was a old friend of the owner got special treatment.

My skills as a color printer have withered over the last decade. I used to print color negatives, did a lot of Cibachrome, I miss Cibachrome!

I'm trying to stay competent. I'm retired, just turned 65, I don't drink etc. What else do I have to do?

 

[DREW WILEY]

I hope to start up RA4 again in warmer weather, IF my backordered roll of favorite paper ever arrives. It's easy to get cut sheet CAII Fuji Crystal Archive RC paper, so there must be a fair amount of darkroom use.
But I'm waiting for more Fujiflex Supergloss, a deluxe product on polyester base, analogous to Cibachrome, but RA4 instead. Just this past week I made some more contact internegatives from old sheet film chromes for sake of this medium. But I also print color neg shots directly onto it.

 

[mshchem]

I hope to start up RA4 again in warmer weather, IF my backordered roll of favorite paper ever arrives. It's easy to get cut sheet CAII Fuji Crystal Archive RC paper, so there must be a fair amount of darkroom use.
But I'm waiting for more Fujiflex Supergloss, a deluxe product on polyester base, analogous to Cibachrome, but RA4 instead. Just this past week I made some more contact internegatives from old sheet film chromes for sake of this medium. But I also print color neg shots directly onto it.

Where do you buy the Fujiflex material? I would like to give it a try. I still enjoy printing color negatives. Still, I think I may be a bit crazy. My inkjet makes nice, really nice. Just not the same as wet printing.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Fujiflex only comes in wide heavy expensive rolls which you have to cut down in the dark yourself. Mine is on backorder with B&H. But all kinds of products are behind schedule during this pandemic, so I expected to wait. If you're happy with inkjet you might as well stick with it. But this kind of product is in a whole different league, and nobody is ever going to confuse it with an inkjet print. For one thing, it has incredible detail capacity, especially when working with large format negatives with the detail there to begin with. Then you have a rich almost-3d look impossible for paper materials. Harder to display of course, due to that full gloss.

If you enlarge this optically, and want to tweak the contrast a bit up or down, you need to do that kind of fine-tuning with supplemental unsharp masks, just like Ciba, only gentler.

 

[mshchem]

I looked at the Fujiflex material on B&H. 30 inch width is the narrowest. Definitely outside my comfort zone. .

 

[mshchem]

Curious how people process color paper?? I started with an amazing little floating stainless steel drum. Had a light baffle, back in the day, with CP5 chemicals and fiberbase Ektacolor Professional paper.

I've used most amateur and semi-pro machines, I still use Kodak rapid color machines, Jobo etc.

 

[btaylor]

Back in the day I used those daylight print drums. They worked fine, I learned to print color neg and slides with Cibachrome and whatever the Kodak process was called with them. I lucked out on a darkroom sale a few years ago that had a Durst Printo machine thrown in. Brought it back to life, so much easier than the drums once it’s set up. Bought a Beseler 16 roller transport dry to dry machine from a member here a couple of years later. I am really happy we can still get RA 4 materials, it’s wet darkroom for me- no scanning, photoshop, etc.

 

[mshchem]

Back in the day I used those daylight print drums. They worked fine, I learned to print color neg and slides with Cibachrome and whatever the Kodak process was called with them. I lucked out on a darkroom sale a few years ago that had a Durst Printo machine thrown in. Brought it back to life, so much easier than the drums once it’s set up. Bought a Beseler 16 roller transport dry to dry machine from a member here a couple of years later. I am really happy we can still get RA 4 materials, it’s wet darkroom for me- no scanning, photoshop, etc.

I've got a nice Durst RCP 20 that I re-geared for RA4. I'm going to fire up for a 1st run. It's working properly, at least test run with water. 8x10 is adequate for most color work I do.

 

[btaylor]

The small roller transport machines make RA4 printing so easy. Load the paper, turn on the lights and a couple of minutes later you are looking at a print. I was fortunate to get the ones I have, they seem to be extremely scarce now. When I started with drums I lusted after the “affordable” Durst Printo, but it was completely out of the question financially.

I've got a nice Durst RCP 20 that I re-geared for RA4. I'm going to fire up for a 1st run. It's working properly, at least test run with water. 8x10 is adequate for most color work I do.

 

[Kino]

I have a couple of color enlargers and a Nova Slot processor; also a Jobo, but paper in drums holds no interest for me.
Hope to get it going eventually; I'd like to print some color.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I was offered a huge 50-inch wide clean RA4 transport processor for free when a local lab retired it, originally about a 100K machine. But those kinds of devices require huge volumes of chemistry, lots of space, and need to be daily monitored. Not realistic for me. Yet I still wanted to make reasonably large prints, up to 30X40 inches. And I have another complication - I'm somewhat allergic to RA4 chemicals. The answer was simple - a big drum processor on a portable cart I can push outside in mild weather for sake of the actual processing outdoors. The light-tight drums are obviously loaded in the darkroom first. And test strips are done in little 8x10 drums. Works great. No, not the fastest method; but I'm not a high volume printer either. Optimal quality is way more important for me than quantity.

 

[lantau]

I believe mschem and I met on the topic two to three years ago. I did RA-4 for a few months from late 2018 into 2019. In November I finally go into it, again. The Ektacolor dev concentrates (unopened) did not survive the waiting time, unfortunately.

I'm using a Nova Clubmate processor and cut my sheets from a 30.5cm/12" roll of Fuji CA DP-II.

It's not always straightforward to decide if the colours are right. Even with my Kodak view filters. It helps to look at the prints for a few days and then decide on another filter adjustment. I think I'm getting better. All in all I can only recommend printing colour negatives. Getting pretty colour prints from the ugly duckling of films (C41 negatives) is quite satisfying.

 

[mshchem]

I just came out of my darkroom. I finally dialed in my filter pack. Used my little Durst RCP 20 for the first time, worked great. I think a slot processor for amateurs, small prints, make a lot of sense easy to replenish etc.

Just for fun I turned on all my Thomas safelights, equipped with the DUC filters. 5 minutes was enough to produce fogged prints. Key is one safelight, not four, and distance/ time.

 

[mshchem]

 

[Pitotshock]

I mostly do drums for larger sized prints and have an RCP20 up and running for RA4 for anything 8x10 and smaller.

For the daylight drums, I have Cibachrome x4, Unicolor x7 , Patterson x3 and a couple of Unicolor roller bases, I also have a 16x20 Mitchell color canoe, which I have tried but I need new filters for my Thomas Duplex Safelight before I can use it without having a 'blueing' effect on the color paper.

I have a few rolls of 20", 30" and 40" wide color paper in Kodak Endura and Fuji Maxima (in the freezer) that I cut down for use on a special built table. I do all of the cutting in the complete dark and can handle rolls up to 51 inches wide. Kinda takes up the dry area of my small basement darkroom, so I like to get all of my cutting done in a session and pack this setup away.

And here is a quick shot of one of the colour prints I did from a 35mm Kodak Gold 200 negative as a 16x20inch print. Yes there is a bit of a green cast to this one, but this one is on really expired Kodak Endura

 

[mshchem]

I mostly do drums for larger sized prints and have an RCP20 up and running for RA4 for anything 8x10 and smaller.


View attachment 294135

For the daylight drums, I have Cibachrome x4, Unicolor x7 , Patterson x3 and a couple of Unicolor roller bases, I also have a 16x20 Mitchell color canoe, which I have tried but I need new filters for my Thomas Duplex Safelight before I can use it without having a 'blueing' effect on the color paper.

View attachment 294115 View attachment 294116



I have a few rolls of 20", 30" and 40" wide color paper in Kodak Endura and Fuji Maxima (in the freezer) that I cut down for use on a special built table. I do all of the cutting in the complete dark and can handle rolls up to 51 inches wide. Kinda takes up the dry area of my small basement darkroom, so I like to get all of my cutting done in a session and pack this setup away.
View attachment 294134


And here is a quick shot of one of the colour prints I did from a 35mm Kodak Gold 200 negative as a 16x20inch print. Yes there is a bit of a green cast to this one, but this one is on really expired Kodak Endura

View attachment 294136

That's quite the setup for cutting down roll paper. I've got a couple Doran 20x24 tubes. I still use Kodak machines for color prints up to 16x20. Means working in the dark, but requires zero effort to get going and clean up. I have several tubes, the first one I bought when Dick Nixon was in his first term as president.

 

[Pitotshock]

Kodak machines for color prints up to 16x20

I have seen your posts with those old Kodak machines, and they look really cool, never seen one for sale in these parts... I have no trouble fumbling my way around in the dark, so I think I'd like that style of machine.

After using the RCP 20, I could really see getting a larger machine at some point, the roller transport machine really speeds up the flow when you can get yourself setup on other things while the processing takes place.

 

[Paul Howell]

I have a LPL 6X7 with a color head, if printing 6X9 or 4X5 I use unicolor filters with tungsten blub. For temp control a cooking contestant temp device, holds temps within a degree. I have a motor base and drums 8X10 to 16X20. I have a Omega color analyzer which is no longer working, so eye balling for color with Kodak viewing filters. For chemistry I use Unicolor R4, paper Fuji. I had a set of additive cutting filters I would like use my Omega D3 with under the lens filters, have always preferred additive over subtractive. I shoot and print about 90% black and white, so my color skills get rusty fast.

 

[lantau]

I just came out of my darkroom. I finally dialed in my filter pack. Used my little Durst RCP 20 for the first time, worked great. I think a slot processor for amateurs, small prints, make a lot of sense easy to replenish etc.

Just for fun I turned on all my Thomas safelights, equipped with the DUC filters. 5 minutes was enough to produce fogged prints. Key is one safelight, not four, and distance/ time.

Isn't 5 min quite long? I have noticed that the strong IR LEDs in my night vision set fogs the paper rather quickly. FP4+ doesn't seem to be quite as sensitive to it. The IR light is quite on the near end of IR, though. I can see a dark red emitting from them. I bought them from a link in a photo forum. I believe LF photo forum. Supposedly some film lab in the US is using them.

I'm using a Jobo Color light. It has a diamond shaped array of orange LED inside. I had to open it up to resolder the capacitor inside. It has two filters, one for Kodak colour paper, i.e. RA4. One for Agfa, which is more a greenish filter. It points to the Nova at a distance of about one metre, and I switch it on after exposure. A few seconds in the dim light doesn't seem to do anything. It is bright on reflective surfaces, like the floor section of the light cone. but only contrast/silhouette like vision is possible.

That is ok, because the Nova is made from dark acrylic, while the slot walls inside are white plastic. Above the the fill level the slot walls reflect the light that hits the top of the processor at a flat angle. I can see the slots and the raised paper good enough to drain it before moving it into the next slot. And frankly, I think I could switch on the room light once it is in the stop bath, but I wait until the paper is in the blix.

I can do the same in the dark, but need my fingertips for vision. Gloves highly recommended in any case.

 

[mshchem]

Isn't 5 min quite long? I have noticed that the strong IR LEDs in my night vision set fogs the paper rather quickly. FP4+ doesn't seem to be quite as sensitive to it. The IR light is quite on the near end of IR, though. I can see a dark red emitting from them. I bought them from a link in a photo forum. I believe LF photo forum. Supposedly some film lab in the US is using them.

I'm using a Jobo Color light. It has a diamond shaped array of orange LED inside. I had to open it up to resolder the capacitor inside. It has two filters, one for Kodak colour paper, i.e. RA4. One for Agfa, which is more a greenish filter. It points to the Nova at a distance of about one metre, and I switch it on after exposure. A few seconds in the dim light doesn't seem to do anything. It is bright on reflective surfaces, like the floor section of the light cone. but only contrast/silhouette like vision is possible.

That is ok, because the Nova is made from dark acrylic, while the slot walls inside are white plastic. Above the the fill level the slot walls reflect the light that hits the top of the processor at a flat angle. I can see the slots and the raised paper good enough to drain it before moving it into the next slot. And frankly, I think I could switch on the room light once it is in the stop bath, but I wait until the paper is in the blix.

I can do the same in the dark, but need my fingertips for vision. Gloves highly recommended in any case.

I have some toy IR "binoculars" I use for loading film reels (spirals) I have put black electrical tape over the stronger LEDs.

One thing I've noticed is every appliance or power supply has a freaking LED on it. Water softener, smoke detector, cable TV power supply, every bit of darkroom equipment. I put little bits of black tape on everything