Finally Got my Ducks in a row - starting RA4 printing

Roger Cole · Mar 16, 2011

hrst said:
Also, consider tray processing. It's a matter of taste but I find "traditional" tray processing much easier and less tedious. There really is no reason why you would need different measures compared to BW printing. Color works just like BW in trays. Use very dim yellow safelight so that you light it up when the time is up in developer. This way you can move the paper to stop bath easily

Temperature control?

I used to do RA4AT (ambient temp Tetnal kit) in trays then switched to a Nova print pod before I choked to death on the fumes. Can't get the AT kit anymore that I'm aware of. I have a Jobo but find print drums too much hassle and too slow with all the drying. If I could maintain temperature in trays I might do color again.

perkeleellinen · Mar 16, 2011

I process in a Nova and the fumes are very, very minimal (I have no extraction), they have to be as my darkroom is a cupboard under the stairs and any exotic fumes drifting into the sitting room would cause my wife to complain. She's never smelt a thing and all I smell with the Kodak RA4 kit is a sort of pleasant detergent scent. Although I process my prints warm, it is possible to print at room temperature and there's quite a few threads on this on APUG.

Roger Cole · Mar 16, 2011

Um yes that's exactly what I said. Fumes from open trays were choking me so I went to a Nova in my case an unheated Print Pod. Note that fumes seemed to be much worse from the room temperature stuff too.

hrst · Mar 16, 2011

Roger Cole said:
Temperature control?

I have no problems using Kodak RA-4 chemicals (not marketed as "Room temp" chemicals) at room temperature at 22 deg C with either Kodak or Fuji paper. Many people here report the same as well at least with Kodak paper. One person reports problems with Fuji paper in room temperature, but I don't have any problems with Fuji, either.

I also have no significant fumes from open trays. Developer has some "fresh", "sweet" kind of interesting smell but not even close to anything disturbing. Maybe you have some interesting chemicals. Tetena "room temperature" chemicals really had ZERO fumes and smell.

The acetic acid stop bath is really the only bath in color processing that smells and may irritate. But that is common to BW as well for many people. You can also probably cut the concentration a bit and change it more often.

perkeleellinen · Mar 16, 2011

Roger Cole said:
Um yes that's exactly what I said.

Sorry! Misread your post.

hoffy · Mar 16, 2011

OK, new question time. I am assuming that something like Ilford Stop would be OK to use in the stop bath?

Cheers

Mick Fagan · Mar 16, 2011

Hoff, many years ago I had streaking problems using RA4 just after its introduction. I was using my Jobo CPE2 and the time of the year was March, important time in Australia for colour printing in drums.

I was pre-soaking the paper (Agfa) then processing as usual, I was getting Cyan streaks like lightening flashes over the paper. A call to Agfa technical department down the road fixed me up in a few minutes.

As the reservoirs start to run low at that time of the year, the water people add a flocculent, which drops the precipitates to the bottom. In other words, the solids floating in the water drop to the bottom, meaning easier to final filter the drinking water.

It was this flocculent that was causing the problem. I stopped doing the pre-soak and never had a problem. I switched to a Durst Printo shortly after anyway. One fella in SA I ran into, had the same problem as I did. I mentioned my fix, he went back home and it cured his Cyan streaking.

As you come from the worst mains water of any capital city, perhaps you should think about this in future years, when water is once again scarce.

I was able to emulate the problem a couple of years later with Fuji RA4 paper in a friends darkroom. We got a buzz when the streaking occurred, even though we thought we may have gotten streaking, actually getting it to happen, was brilliant.

I still have those RA4 paper solutions, do you know anyone over here heading west, or anyone from your part of the world coming over then back?

Mick.

hrst · Mar 16, 2011

hoffy said:
OK, new question time. I am assuming that something like Ilford Stop would be OK to use in the stop bath?

Cheers

2% acetic acid stop can be guaranteed to work.

However, I have had no problems using odorless citric acid stop bath. Cannot be guaranteed though. PE has said there may be a possibility of problems if using citric acid. I went back to acetic acid after hearing that, as I can stand the acetic acid smell.

Roger Cole · Mar 16, 2011

So here's "the rest of the story" with my experience with Tetanal RA4AT back in the late 90s..

The solutions themselves didn't stink. Not, that is, until the developer laden paper hit the stop bath, which Tetanal recommended be mixed to twice B&W strength. Then it nearly choked me out of my darkroom, which at the time DID have exhaust ventilation. I switched to a Nova Print Pod (an unheated design I don't believe they make now) which helped some. Then I changed to a citric acid stop, which solved the rest of the problem.

However, I did get yellowish white borders, so clearly nothing to do with filtration. Prints looked pretty good in spite of that as it only really seemed to be noticeable in pure white areas. I never solved the problem, but I wonder now if it could have been related to the citric acid which I also read PE saying could cause issues with RA4. I don't recall if I had the problem with the prior acetic acid stop, but I think I did (in which case it clearly wasn't the citric acid stop.)

I continued using the odorless stops for B&W because they're just more pleasant and work fine, but I don't mind the acetic acid, much, in B&W. Something about that Tetanal developer hitting that double strength acetic acid stop, though, released something truly horrid. An hour would be enough to give me a sore throat.

Other people may not have the same results but I know that I did! It was BAD.

Now that I'm returning to the darkroom I'd pretty much decided to work only in B&W and do any color I might want to do in hybrid mode, but if I can use commonly available RA4 chemicals at ambient temperature I may re-think that. I do recall reading on here once (the result of a search) that RA4 replinisher could be used at room temperature, but there wasn't much more information on it.

I would think that times would be extended at lower temperatures. Is there a commonly used table of time adjustments for lower temperatures? How much does the change in temperature affect the filtration?

hoffy · Mar 16, 2011

OK, would White Vinegar work fine for acetic acid? Can I use any old generic brand vinegar? Or do I need to find a purer version? I read that mixing it 1:4 is the correct dilution. Is this what others would recommend?

And Mick, thanks for the info about the water. I will keep that in mind. As for your chems, I am not sure if its in the too hard basket. I am in Melbourne in the first week of April, but I am flying in/out, so taking the chems with me is probably out of the question.

Cheers

Oh and finally. Thanks for all the replies thus far. This is awesome (but keep them coming!)

mikecnichols · Mar 16, 2011

I use a vinegar and water solution. From what I was told, most white vinegars are around 5.8% acidic, therefore a 1:1 solution would cut that in half. I use a local store brand version and have fine results. Just make sure you check the % on the bottle.

hoffy · Mar 16, 2011

OK, got it! The one that is in the pantry doesn't state the concentration. Next time I go shopping, I'll check it out and see what I can find

hrst · Mar 16, 2011

Roger Cole said:
So here's "the rest of the story" with my experience with Tetanal RA4AT back in the late 90s..

However, I did get yellowish white borders, so clearly nothing to do with filtration. Prints looked pretty good in spite of that as it only really seemed to be noticeable in pure white areas. I never solved the problem

Thanks for your story! Sounds familiar .

The yellow Dmin (borders) are probably because of faulty Tetenal "room temp" kit, specifically, the blix they sell as "monoconcentrate". It was faulty when I last used it a few years ago. Tetenal even admitted it finally, and said they will try to fix the problem. You can find the emails if you search for my posts around 2008 or 2009.

It has probably always been faulty. Tetenal claimed that they had not received other complaints, but I'd suspect it's because the problems are hard to connect to the chemistry by most people; in fact, most people think they are doing something wrong, using a lot of time and money to solve the problem.

For example, I had found with Tetenal chemistry that 45 seconds in blix reduced yellow staining compared to 60 seconds. Now you see, when I saw problems of insufficient bleaching (subdued, dark colors) and fixing (prints darkening in sunlight!) action, even with normal or even extended blixing time, I realized the extent of problems of Tetenal blix. Slightly yellow borders is just a precursor.

Tetenal's pre-mixed blix bath has caused me and others many problems. Depending on how fresh kit you could get, the problems might have been nonexistent, or from slight yellowiness to crude brown staining of the print and crud in blix solution.

I received one kit as a compensation for several faulty kits. I moved to Kodak chemicals and my problems were solved for good.

hoffy · Mar 22, 2011

OK, new question time (in leu of starting a new thread!).

What are the best ways to alter/control contrast?

Cheers

polyglot · Mar 23, 2011

Short answer is "you don't" (at least to the extent possible with B&W) except for some fine tuning by adding things to the RA4 developer. I think sulfite will reduce the contrast (from last time I asked that question) but I don't know exactly how much is required.

hoffy · Mar 23, 2011

polyglot said:
Short answer is "you don't" (at least to the extent possible with B&W) except for some fine tuning by adding things to the RA4 developer. I think sulfite will reduce the contrast (from last time I asked that question) but I don't know exactly how much is required.

I was afraid you would say that

markbarendt · Mar 23, 2011

Burn and dodge?

perkeleellinen · Mar 23, 2011

Film choice and over exposure.

Roger Cole · Mar 23, 2011

Nowadays dodge and burn. In the past Kodak had three papers of different contrasts and Fuji and Agfa made RA4 papers as well so you had some control via paper choice though the range was still smaller than for BW.

hrst · Mar 23, 2011

Try adding sodium sulphite to developer, it works for fine-tuning. This way you will have two developers, "normal" and "low-contrast". Both will keep very well in airtight bottles so I find that this is not cumbersome. Probably you could "split-develop" in two trays for intermediate effects, I haven't tried that but it could work.

Start with about 0.5 g/l. 1.0 g/l will give greater effect but there may be a notable lack of DMAX. It will also depend on paper, this number is for the traditional Supra Endura.

Also, try preflash. It works very nicely to bring highlights under control without much affecting shadows. You can use a blank leader piece of the same film type so that you don't need to change filtration.

You can also shorten development time to lower contrast a bit. Or increase developer time to add a little bit of punch.

SLIMT works too. Search for the BW forum here for instructions, but I found that I need much higher ferricyanide concentration (about 20x or something like that IIRC) than usually given for BW papers. SLIMT seems to help in blocked-up shadows, without killing DMAX too much.

However, if you find that your prints are constantly too low or high in contrast, adjust your negs -- C-41 film development time. 15 seconds less will give you a bit lower contrast, 15 seconds more will give you a small boost of punch.

Reducing agitation (almost stopping) can also have a small effect! It will lower overall contrast but keep the local microcontrast up, as in stand development of film. The effect is subtle but worth trying.

You can combine all of these methods.

However, as stated by others, dodging and burning is usually the way to go.

EdSawyer · Mar 23, 2011

Other options re: contrast: Find some Portra Endura paper - it's out of date now but still should work well. This brings it down maybe 3/4 of a "grade" vs. Supra.

The best method is also the most cumbersome: Masking. Ctien has a good write up on how to do this in his book Post Exposure. Basically you use diffuse/thin B&W positives (made from contact printing the color neg) to mask (hold back) exposure of the color negative, which results in a more compressed contrast scale.

-Ed

hrst · Mar 23, 2011

Ah, masking is definitely the way to go. You can do almost anything with masking, including curve shape modifications. You can modify highlights or shadows separately, you can adjust overall contrast, you can unsharp mask for "sharpening" or "automatic dodge&burn" effects. I just hope I had time, energy and resources to do all of that!

hoffy · Mar 23, 2011

Thanks for the replies. I know for my first efforts I will probably just straight up print, but this is a fact finding mission after all!

David Grenet · Mar 23, 2011

hoffy said:
OK, new question time (in leu of starting a new thread!).

What are the best ways to alter/control contrast?

Cheers

So, as the others have said the short answer is "you don't", but if you do a search you will find that this has come up before and there are ways - I haven't tried any of this myself but thought you may be interested anyway...

As has already been mentioned, adding sulfite to the dev can reduce contrast, although I don't think you can go very far before you begin to lose your blacks.

To increase contrast you can add hydrogen peroxide (or cobalt hexamine chloride) to the dev, but this reduces its life dramatically.

hoffy · May 19, 2011

OK, again, in lieu of starting a new thread......

I was reading through some literature last night (the jobo printing instructions) and it talked about activating the bleach, by ensuring that it has been exposed to oxygen (the suggestion was to put the solution in a bigger bottle and simply giving it a good old shake). I must admit, I had not seen this talked about in the past. Is this necessary when using a Blix?

BTW, I have finally got a free weekend. Looks like Saturday night is going to be my first attempt (unless the world comes to an end first)

Cheers

Finally Got my Ducks in a row - starting RA4 printing

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