lower contrast RA4

[rbrigham]

Hi

Ive read that adding 0,5 g/l sodium sulfite to RA4 developer will reduce the contrast
dose anybody kn ow if that will significantly shorten the life of it
I process in a Nova slot processor and replenish
so ideally it has its low contrast effect and is stable

best

robin

 

[koraks]

It should not reduce the life of the developer but because the sulfite will oxidize, it won't be stable either. It's more of a one shot thing if it needs to be consistent.

 

[Liftahorse]

Hi Robin,
I wonder if you can help me. I believe you might have a copy of a magazine I am having trouble locating. A few years ago I believe that you collected a collection of Camera magazines in London following a post on this site.

I am having trouble finding a copy of July 1968.

Do you have this copy? I am simply trying to identify exactly which photographs were included in an article in this volume about Lewis Carroll for some research I am doing.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you
Chris

 

[DREW WILEY]

There was an older thread on this sodium sulfite tweak, based on a U-tube video maybe 3 or 4 yrs ago. I tried it at a range of concentrations, and all of them worked miserably. Only a very slight contrast change, but a huge annoying color shift. If you are routinely having problems, try switching to a lower contrast film; that's the easiest way. The most elegant and controllable method is through unsharp film masking, using b&w sheet film, which takes some experience and special punch and register equipment to perfect. I've done a lot of that. Some people learn how to do "pre- flashing" of their printing paper, a technique that doesn't appeal to me due to muddying the deeper tones somewhat. It is also possible to pre-flash film itself in-camera, even selectively per frame itself; but that too involves too much description to fit into a basic query thread like this one.

 

[pentaxuser]

There was an older thread on this sodium sulfite tweak, based on a U-tube video maybe 3 or 4 yrs ago.

I recall that several years ago Greg Davis in a video tried a couple of methods , one of which was the sodium sulfite tweak I recall that compared to the "before" version the "after" version did show a difference but I can't recall which of the 2 methods was better nor what the other method was.

OP can I suggest that you look at the Greg Davis range of YouTube videos, find the one that covers this subject and decide if it meets your requirements

pentaxuser

 

[DREW WILEY]

Yeah, just out of curiosity with some leftover paper, it was that Greg Davis experiment, hearsay from someone else, that I tried it too. Easy and cheap enough if one is interested, and possibly a bit of fun. Almost every darkroom has sodium sulfite on hand. But otherwise a complete waste of time.

Don't mix sodium sulfite powder into your developer. Just make up a 1% solution of it, and add the right amount of that to only the amount of developer you need for that one print. Or else plan to do several on the same day. You'll probably have to discard the developer in your Nova at the end of the day; you'd have an unpredictable problem replenishing it in that fashion.

Learn supplementary masking instead, which allows for both minus contrast and plus contrast techniques which are highly controllable. With color neg film and RA4 paper, I only need to mask once in awhile; back in Cibachrome days, it was necessary for almost every image, and nobody complained about a little extra work when the results were so rewarding.