First RA-4 prints

Joao Gomes

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Hello everybody!

I just started printing in colour and its getting a quite difficult...
Above you can find a scan of the print I did, and also a scan made with kg Epson v550 of the negative.
The difference is bug
The lack of sharp os due to the lens I guess. It is very opaque caused by fungus which destroyed the coating... But does it affect the colour too?.. not that way right?
The colour settings sede C0 M74 Y66
What should I change in your opinion?

Many thanks
João



 
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Joao Gomes

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BTW... The enlarger is a Durst M305 and the film a Kodak Colorplus 200.
Paper is Fuji Chrystal Archive matt
 
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Jim Blodgett

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I'd say you have the time about right. I think you have too much blue, so I'd add about 20 points of yellow (by reducing the yellow filter) and see how that looks. If that takes you too far into yellow that's good, then you know you have to add a little blue back in.

Then maybe you'll look at it and see a red cast, so you deal with that.

At the same time maybe you'll want to add or subtract 2%, or 5% on the exposure time.

Keep pecking away and when you think you have it, walk away. Come back the next day and look at it with fresh eyes and you might notice an ever so slight cyan cast. So you deal with that.

And on and on until you either give up or are pleased with the print.

That darned blue has given me trouble since I started working in color. Not sure if it's my eyes or if that's a universal issue, but for whatever reason blue and cyan are the two I most often see the following day, or when reviewing prints I thought I was done with.
 
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Joao Gomes

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Before I did that print, I did another one which seems too yellow (maybe a quite green to).

Forgot to tell the exposure time: 7sec.
The one below I used the following settings
8sec
f8
C 0
M 80
Y 60

Maybe I just need to exposure a little bit less, no? And the lack of contrast?! Should it be only due to the bad condition of the enlarger lend?

 

Jim Blodgett

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Okay, well, I'd say that print has too much red. You are not getting much seperation between the leaves and the bark of the trees. I still think you have a bit of blue, or maybe cyan in there, too. That asphalt doesn't look quite right.

If you think your time is right stay with that time and keep working your color pack until you are satisfied. Do you have a set of viewing filters to look through? That really helps me find what color to adjust and approximate how much.

Then, once you get your colors cleaned up, you can go back and micro adjust your time. It's amazing how much difference a couple tenths of a second can make.

About your focus - exactly how are you focusing your enlarger?

I don't know anything about adjusting contrast with a color negative/print. Never heard of it.
 

mnemosyne

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Hi Joao,

the prints you show look weird. I would say, something is wrong with that enlarger lens!

From your description ("opaque") it sounds like the lens might be suffering not from fungus but from lens (element) separation. This is a common problem especially with (but not restricted to) older Rodenstock enlarging lenses like Rodagon etc. If your lens is affected by separation, it is ready for the trash can.

My recommendation would be to get a proper, clean/known good enlarging lens. Maybe you can borrow it from somewhere?

For a start, I would also recommend to replace the halogen lamp in your enlarger lamp house, just to be sure. Old, worn out lamps can also give funny results. Make sure you get the proper lamp for your enlarger, one intended for enlarging purposes. It should not be too expensive (below 10 Euros).

Getting a good RA-4 print does not start with the filtering. The "environment" (darkroom, enlarger, processing) has to be set up properly and in really good working order, much more so than for b&w printing.

Post pictures of your lens if you feel unsure about its condition. Or any question regarding the enlarger or your processing.

Good luck, John
 

koraks

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It's great to see more people pick up ra4 printing these days! Keep it up!

Jim's suggestions are very helpful indeed. Change filtration in big steps to get a feel for the kind of changes you get. From time to time take a pause to "neutralize" your color vision; the brain has a way of compensating for cooor casts automatically; a fresh view on a print often shows that you've grown blind to certain color shifts while making test strips.

I also second the suggestion to get a good lens. Not only is the unsharpness problematic in itself, it also creates problems with color bleed between adjacent areas, making good color reproduction impossible. This really needs to be adressed first in order to be able to make a decent print!
 
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Joao Gomes

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Many thanks guys!!

Your replies are being priceless!
Many many thanks.
I have 2 rogonar 50mm f2.8... which one the worse... The problem is on the front element in both cases... I will post a photos below.
Just picked up a rodagon 50mm 2.8 this morning from eBay. Let's see!

mnemosyne refers also about the enlarger lamp. I'm using a 100w lamp but I change it for an old 75w never used I had with all the gear (that cames from my father). I change it because the 100W are gaving Exposure times around 4sec...
But I noticed also that the lamp seems to be much more bluer than the 100W, so I start to apply the B. Filter... Sounds it right??









 

koraks

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Wow, that's not a lens element, that's a shiny piece of rock you picked up on a mountainside
Fortunately a decent 50mm lems should be quite easy to pick up for little to no money.

As to the bulbs - either should work. I don't think it's going to make all that much of a difference in the end.
 

ericdan

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If you want it to look like the first photo you also need to add some magenta (by reducing the magenta filter setting). Look at the pavement and how magenta that is in the first one. That being said I think the pavement is too magenta in your reference photo.
The blurriness was obviously the dirty lens.
 

mnemosyne

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These lenses are heavily affected by fungus and can not be saved. Sometime fungus will just wipe off without any traces, but here the fungus has etched into the glass which makes for the special "soft focus" effect visible in your prints.

The Rodagon you purchased is a good lens and all you need.

It seems the color of the halogen lamps drifts a bit over time with progressing age. It will yellow noticeably towards the end of life. By noticeably I mean, you will notice a difference in filter settings for the same negative going from an old lamp to a new one, even if it is the same brand and type. Sometimes the difference in light color is visible to the naked eye.

The Sylvana lamp should be good. Apart from the lamp itself, the connector (socket with wires) is a consumable and should be replaced from time to time. It is a penny item but when worn can give all kinds of freaky problems including prematurely dying lamps and fluctutations in color.
 
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Joao Gomes

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Hello friends,

Hope everything is fine with you!

New lens just arrived.
Gonna probe it tomorrow.

Anyway, a comparison between the new lens and the old... Just the image projected on the enlarger board...
What a difference!!!!

 

MattKing

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Joao Gomes

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pentaxuser

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It looks good to me . It is always nice when you spend money and then see that it was justified

pentaxuser
 
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Joao Gomes

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Many thanks for all your help guys!!
I will gonna test with another filtration
Compared with the negative scan I took with my Epsom there's a big difference. Anyway I like it as it is.




BTW... As I told you, I have the Durst B. Filter in the position ON which means that an additional filtration 40Y and 40M is added.
After that picture, I put that filter OFF and increased manually the filtration in Y and M by 40 points... Guess what.. it's very green/blueish/yellowish...

 

Donald Qualls

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Doesn't filter "off" mean you're getting white light (for brighter focusing) and bypass whatever filter setting you've entered (that is, you don't get any filtration with filter "off")? Not certain, just about to set up my own first color enlarger (and it's an Omega anyway), but that's what I thought I'd read.

FWIW, I like the larger print above better than the scan, in terms of color. It's printed a little darker, so the colors have more saturation. You could cut your print exposure by 1/3 to 1/2 stop and it'd be in between, and probably better still.
 

gdavis

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Bluish-green = cyan. You get more cyan in the print by decreasing cyan filtration (but that should already be at 0) or increasing yellow and magenta. I would guess that either you got the supplementary filter setting backwards (so added Y+M when you thought you were subtracting it) or it's broken and not doing anything, giving you just the Y+M increase you made manually. Either case would have resulted in more Y+M filtration giving you a cyan print.

If you had mistakenly taken the filters out with the white lever, the print would have gone red.
 
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Joao Gomes

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Gonna test it again.

The B. Filter is an additional filter which increase Y and M by 40 points.
It's used when the maximum filtration of Y and M (130 at Durst 305 colour head) is not sufficient.

I just tried to use the enlarger with that additional filter off adding 40 points of Y and M to the inicial filtration (which is "correct") expecting to get the same result...
I passed from 64Y and 80M with the additional filter ON to 104Y and 120M with the filter OFF....

It's supposed that the result should be the same no?
 

gdavis

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You should be able to just turn the enlarger lamp on with the room lights off and flip the filters and see the change. That should at least give you a good idea if things are working and in which direction.
 
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