Like "ic-racer" said, the biggest problem is the missing contrast control. You can get good results with good negatives, but there is always a point, when you come to the limits. Modern papers are quite high in contrast (optimized for RGB laser exposing) and some situtations can make it impossible to get good prints.
For example landscape pictures on a Kodak Ektar taken in bright sunlight are sometimes unprintable.
You can do contrast masking, but who has the time for all this today? I did this but it is a hell of work.
On the other side, if you want higher saturation in color, you have the same problem.
Dodge and burn is possible but not as easy like with B/W. You can get color shifts. Changing exposure time changes color a bit. So if you want to burn part of the sky, for example, you must make a second exposure with slightly changed color filtration for the sky, so it will not become green or red.
This all is very difficult and needs very very long time of experience.
Depending on your negative, you have exactly ONE "correct" print with defined contrast and color saturation and that's it! Compared to the options you have with electronic picture processing, this could be a bit boring after a while.
When processing B/W, you just can put in another filter to change your contrast of Multigrade or use another developer to change contrast. You also can dodge and burn very easy. So the creative possibilities are much higher.
Sure, color is fun! And it is not very expensive. Rolls of paper are very cheap compared with B/W-paper.
But if you EXPECT professional results, you must spend lots of time.
evaluating proper color balance of a wet print
The change of color from a wet print to a dry print depends strongly on the brand of the paper. So I would start to 1. buy a 5000K lamp for graphical work as lightsource to check the colors and 2. buy a roller PE-dryer in Ebay to dry the prints before evaluating colors. Color printing takes enough time, so you don't want to waste the rest of your time with drying test strips with a hairdryer...
The right lightsource is very important. I use a Philips Master TL-D Graphical light tube (about $10) for color inspection.
There is nothing worse than finding all your prints worthless the next day at daylight, after spending the whole night making prints when all colors looked nice under your tungsten light bulb.
In my eyes, a color analyzer is NOT necessary. Most analyzers from the 80s of the last century are NOT useable with modern film and paper. Papers are much more light sensitive than early papers and sometimes, you cannot set the paper index of the analyzer to the required level. So if you want an analyzer, you should take the most modern version you can get.
But in my eyes you can save that money. Learning color filtration is much more effective by doing it manually from the beginning.
With some experience you don't need more than 2-3 teststripes to get the right filtration.
Joachim
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