Developing RA-4

BetterSense · May 8, 2009

I'm asking this out of curiosity, since I have no idea how color processes work.

I understand that you can get RA-4 paper, and use an enlarger and project through the color negative and expose the RA-4 paper. Then, do you just develop, fix, and and rinse like normal B&W paper in normal B&W chemicals?

Matt5791 · May 8, 2009

In a word, yes.

In some ways colour is easier than B&W - once you learn to recognise colour casts etc. - because colour prints are more right or wrong.

You use the filters in the colour enlarger (yellow, magenta, cyan) to balance the print colour. Practiacally speaking you only ever use yellow and magenta and just leave the cyan at 0. Usually kick off with a guess of 30m 30y.

Matt

BetterSense · May 8, 2009

That's a lot less complicated then I thought it would be then, if I already have the chemicals. Developing film might be annoying, but I have that done now anyway for dirt cheap.

PHOTOTONE · May 8, 2009

BetterSense said:
I'm asking this out of curiosity, since I have no idea how color processes work.

I understand that you can get RA-4 paper, and use an enlarger and project through the color negative and expose the RA-4 paper. Then, do you just develop, fix, and and rinse like normal B&W paper in normal B&W chemicals?

NO!! Please note..you DO NOT develop RA-4 paper in b/w chemicals, it requires RA-4 chemicals...RA-4 Developer and RA-4 blix. But, as others have said, it is just about as simple, or more simple than b/w. You have a more-or-less fixed develop and blix time, which is dependent on the temperature you process at. There is no "pulling" or leaving print in developer longer, you have one time. You will have to develop in the dark, if you use trays, as color paper is sensitive to all colors of light, so you develop by time and temperature alone, no visual inspection, and even if you could visually inspect, you wouldn't see much as the silver image developing along with the dye image doesn't give you much to see, until it goes thru the blix, which removes all the silver, leaving only the dye image.

BetterSense · May 8, 2009

OK. So is the print exposure something that you have to experiment to find? What does an overexpose/underexposed color print look like? What about contrast; is that a parameter that you can control?

PHOTOTONE · May 8, 2009

In addition to my comments in the post above, you will have to have an enlarger with a "color" head, which has dial-in filtration for cyan, magenta and yellow. You will have to make some test prints to arrive at a color balance using the filtration available with your color head. You cannot make acceptable color prints with the white light from a b/w enlarger set-up unless you invest in a rather delicate and cumbersome set of CC filters.

pentaxuser · May 8, 2009

You can process in total darkness with Jobo drums and a Jobo processor but it may take some time to get comfortable with darkness. You have to extract the paper, place in easel, expose then place in the drum and put the lid on then you can turn the lights on. Alternatively you can use a sodium safelight such as a DUKA or I think in the U.S a Thompson? LED safelight ofer a modern equivalent. Sodium lights are quite bright but are quite expensive to buy. If I had to work in complete darkness then I'd give up RA4 but you may be different.

pentaxuser

srs5694 · May 8, 2009

There are a lot of options for RA-4 processing. You can use open trays (I do), just like for B&W; or you can do it in drums or various other tools, which permit you to do most of the process in ordinary room light, leaving only the paper exposure for total darkness. You can run at a variety of temperatures, but if it's much below the 94F (IIRC) that's the standard temperature, you must either use a modified developer or extend development time. You can use a color head with CMY filters or use color filter sets, but the latter are awkward. You can use CMY filtration or separate RGB filtration (CMY is much more popular and, unless you've got certain enlargers, much easier). There are options for paper and photochemicals, but not as many as there are for B&W.

Adjusting contrast is not easy; there's no color equivalent of VC B&W paper. It used to be that Kodak offered three contrast grades in color paper and Fuji offered two, but I believe both are now limited to one standard grade. There are procedures for adjusting contrast, but they're complicated.

Overexposed prints look too dark, underexposed prints look too light, and prints with bad contrast look like they've got the wrong contrast.

You will need to adjust color balance. You'll probably struggle a bit to find it at first, but if your film processing is consistent, you use the same paper and RA-4 chemicals, and you don't change your light sources a lot, the filtration won't change much from one roll or frame to another. There are various tools and techniques you can use to find the right color balance, including printing a color ringaround, using a color analyzer, and using color viewing filters. I mostly favor the ringaround; most color analyzers require you to get a perfect print first, and mine only gets me in the ballpark to begin with -- it doesn't do much better than just using the last filter values I used. Viewing filters can be helpful, but only up to a point, in my experience.

One more point: Processing C-41 film into negatives isn't much harder than doing B&W. If you've got a develop-only service that you're happy with and you don't want to bother with doing it yourself, by all means stick with them. Doing it yourself isn't hard, though. I personally find it much easier than doing the color printing.

Neal · May 8, 2009

Dear BetterSense,

1) Search the forum using RA-4 and Trays as keywords. (Use gloves if you try tray processing.)
2) Purchase a Kodak Color Darkroom DATAGUIDE (the most recent you can find).
3) Enjoy.

Neal Wydra

nickandre · May 8, 2009

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

I wrote that a while ago. I also wrote one on color film processing.

It's a relatively simple process. It's a black and white developer with something that activates the dyes in the paper. When you remove the silver and excess halide crystals (bleach fix step, usually combined as blix) you're left with just dyes.

Matt5791 · May 9, 2009

Apologies - I mis-read you original post and didn't see the bit about developing in B&W chemicals! Of course, as everyone else has said, you need colour chemicals, but the process is, or can be, much the same.

Matt5791 · May 9, 2009

pentaxuser said:
You can process in total darkness with Jobo drums and a Jobo processor but it may take some time to get comfortable with darkness. You have to extract the paper, place in easel, expose then place in the drum and put the lid on then you can turn the lights on. Alternatively you can use a sodium safelight such as a DUKA or I think in the U.S a Thompson? LED safelight ofer a modern equivalent. Sodium lights are quite bright but are quite expensive to buy. If I had to work in complete darkness then I'd give up RA4 but you may be different.

pentaxuser

I work in total darkness, but I have often wondered about using a safelight - which one do you use? I guess it really makes a difference in the light of your final sentence!

RellikJM · May 9, 2009

You can use a Kodak #13 safelight when working with color materials.

Bob-D659 · May 9, 2009

And if you're not really careful, it will fog as well. Drums work well and let you have more consistency in processing than trays.

Anon Ymous · May 9, 2009

Bob-D659 said:
And if you're not really careful, it will fog as well. Drums work well and let you have more consistency in processing than trays.

And I assume that you need to rinse - wipe the drum after each print...

rootberry · May 9, 2009

I don't have a color head yet, but I'm also interested to know what the procedure is for jobos...

srs5694 · May 9, 2009

Anon Ymous said:
Bob-D659 said:

And if you're not really careful, it will fog as well. Drums work well and let you have more consistency in processing than trays.

Click to expand...

And I assume that you need to rinse - wipe the drum after each print...

You need to dry the drum pretty thoroughly. When I first started doing color printing, I found that I got these ugly green streaks on half my prints. I eventually traced the problem to water dripping on the paper from imperfectly dried drums. In fact, I found that the time required to dry my drum was really slowing me down. That's why I switched from drums to open trays. I personally don't have problems with consistency using trays, but perhaps others do, or perhaps my standards are simply low enough that I don't notice the problems that others would.

pentaxuser · May 9, 2009

Matt I use the DUKA 10. It's the forerunner of the DUKA 50. In fact I am not sure what the improvement was in the DUKA 50. The light level is remarkable. I use it at level 5 which is recommended. Levels go from 0 to 25 at which you can easily read a book! I haven''t done any safelight testing and haven't done any RA4 for quite some time but suspect that I could run the DUKA at more than 5.

Burning and dodging seem to be required for hardly any prints so the paper is exposed to the safelight only for the period it takes to extract from a papersafe, place into a pre-set easel, expose and then place in a Jobo drum. A matter of seconds only.

The alternative to the JOBO drum is a Nova Quad which I haven't used but while the DUKA is still on when the paper is in the dev I doubt if much of the DUKA's light penetrates into the slot.

I first saw a demo of RA4 printing with a Nova Quad in Jessops public demos of printing at its headquarters in Leicester. The room was far from light proof but the prints seemed unaffected. While the lecturers were using LED safelights rather than a DUKA, the LED light combined with a very low level of diffused daylight getting in gave quite a high level of light.

It's worth pointing out that the DUKA needs to be left on constantly. If it is switched off it takes several mins to get up to the temp required to produce the correct wavelength of light. Until it gets there it is unsafe. Inside the DUKA is a revolving shield operated by a knob and it is this that cuts the light right down but even on zero setting some light is seen.

With at least one analyser, the Colorstar 3000, analysis of the neg has to take place without any safelight. Probably turning the setting down to zero is sufficient but rather than doing this each time I think a better way is to place a shield over the outer light cover. A custom-made one would be best but a lid from a 10x8 box of paper is very effective and is easy to put on and take off.

Can't speak about the supply situation outside of the U.K but here spare DUKA bulbs seem impossible to obtain and the easiest way if one fails is simply to but another working DUKA. Nova and SDS in the U.K. often have them and prices for DUKA's on e-bay seem reasonable these days, although they don't come along every week.

That's my experience of using the DUKA and I hope this has helped all those who may be contemplating RA4.

pentaxuser

Jon Shiu · May 9, 2009

I learned color printing on a Beseler condenser enlarger, stacking up magenta and yellow filters to make a "filter pack". While it does take longer than a dial-in color head, it works fine.

Jon

Thomas Wilson · May 9, 2009

Jon, that's how I learned, although I now have the Omega Super Chromega D with the Dichroic ll head. I use a Hope 20" RT processor with replenishment system. Dry to dry in 4 minutes! What I don't have is a safe light. I never saw the need for one. Still don't!

nickandre · May 9, 2009

The only reason safelights don't fog the paper is because they're so dim you can't see anything! I've found working in a room with a small filtration of outside light to be acceptable, even to the point that I could see what I was doing. There was no noticeable fog to the paper base when I used my normal face down tray processing. I don't see the fuss, it's not a particularly picky process and develops to completion.

Thomas Wilson · May 9, 2009

Would someone (maybe Photo engineer) please elaborate on "RR-4," which has been described as a primitive alternative to the old R-3 or current Ilfochrome process. Am I reading correctly that this can be done using RA-4 paper and a combination of B&W and RA-4 chemistry? I'll try anything once!

nickandre · May 9, 2009

Yes.

B+W Developer to develop the reversal image
stop bath or wash (turn lights on now)
RA-4 developer
Blix
Wash

The result is a typically high contrast image in need of contrast masking with a visible mottle in the background. I have tried it without much success. I've been thinking of using a dilute b+w developer to reduce contrast and I think it worked but I still didn't like the mottle. I'm planning to try printing to duplicating film and display it as a transparency.

Is there a solution for the mottle?

Thomas Wilson · May 9, 2009

That sounds simple enough, I'll give it a try.

Matt5791 · May 10, 2009

Thanks for that, really helpful - I was very interested in the practical aspects because the general feedback on colour safelights has been don't bother because it will be so dim there isn't much point - so I never have! However your experience seems a good one.

I'll look out for one - although I also want to get hold of something like a colorstar one day, and I guess it is a little like the RH Designs Analyser Pro in the way you say it needs to analyse with no safelight.

Developing RA-4

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