My first color handprint are so red!

[Flavia Daniele]

Hello,

Recently I approched to color printing and just yesterday I made my first test. The times seems to be correct but the color is totally wrong.They are completely red. I tried to get CYAN lower and I incresed the values of M & Y but the second print was similar to the first. The handbook that I'm using said '''your image will look like this if you totally omit the printing filters during exposure. This can happen if you use the ''white light'' lever to check the image and then forget to restore filtration before printing''. I thought it was about the red filter but it can be because the print would be cyan... so now I'm wondering which lever is! I've a meopta opemus 6 with 3colour head and I really don't know about this lever. Does anyone know about it?

THIS IS THE PIC
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1kkXdYytProzehMMpbIG4UnrJzZgo5ylH

 

[eatfrog]

just wanted to double check that this is color paper and was developed in ra-4?

 

[Flavia Daniele]

Yes yes the temperature of chimicals was right ( I use Bellini RA-4 kit) and the paper was fuji crystal

 

[twelvetone12]

If you develop the print in regular BW developer you get a faint grey image and no color.
OP what filtration did you dial in?

 

[Flavia Daniele]

The first strip was : f8 - times 2 and 4 second and C60 M40 Y40
the second strip was - f11 - times 2 and 4 second and C10 M60 Y60

In an italina forum about analog photography some guys already suggested me to put Cyan at 0 and today I'm gonna try it but I want to be sure that my enlarger has all the right settings. A guy in the italian forum mentioned about a lever that switch white light into filtrated light so was wondering if my enlarger has this setting or not.

 

[twelvetone12]

So as a rule of thumb to start you should dial in only two colours, generally M and Y, if you add the third one it will just add more ND. I don't know your colour head so I can't say about the switch, but if the filters are engaged you will see the projected image as you change them. I.e. more magenta will make the projected image magenta-er.
I would also advise you to change only one setting at a time. For my enlarger on 24x18 paper for example I will do a test strip of 3 seconds (so I have strips for 3, 6, 9, 12 and so on) @ f11, If the colours are far off I change M or Y and repeat with the other settings the same. It will help you visualise what each change does.
With my enlarger with fuji paper I use M60 and Y80 for example, one thing you can do is big changes in one setting: say you have C0 M60 and Y60, you do another strip and C0 M90 and Y60. This should give you a dramatic enough change to see a big difference, and then see if you are going in the right direction, and then you can dial finer adjustments. It takes a bit of patience but you will quickly see how each change reflects in the print.

 

[AgX]

This can happen if you use the ''white light'' lever to check the image and then forget to restore filtration before printing''. I thought it was about the red filter but it can be because the print would be cyan... so now I'm wondering which lever is! I've a meopta opemus 6 with 3colour head and I really don't know about this lever.

-) a classic B&W enlarger got a red filter to be swung-in to allow for positioning of the paper etc.under protective red lighting

-) some colour enlargers have a lever to pull-out the complete filter stack for focusing, metering etc. At releasing such lever the fliter stack will be repositioned in the positions set before.
Both Meopta colour-heads apt for your enlarger got such lever at both sides of the head.

 

[Flavia Daniele]

So as a rule of thumb to start you should dial in only two colours, generally M and Y, if you add the third one it will just add more ND. I don't know your colour head so I can't say about the switch, but if the filters are engaged you will see the projected image as you change them. I.e. more magenta will make the projected image magenta-er.
I would also advise you to change only one setting at a time. For my enlarger on 24x18 paper for example I will do a test strip of 3 seconds (so I have strips for 3, 6, 9, 12 and so on) @ f11, If the colours are far off I change M or Y and repeat with the other settings the same. It will help you visualise what each change does.
With my enlarger with fuji paper I use M60 and Y80 for example, one thing you can do is big changes in one setting: say you have C0 M60 and Y60, you do another strip and C0 M90 and Y60. This should give you a dramatic enough change to see a big difference, and then see if you are going in the right direction, and then you can dial finer adjustments. It takes a bit of patience but you will quickly see how each change reflects in the print.

That's an awsome advice! I'll try new test in a while but first I wanted to collect some opinions and advices from other photographers to understand deeply what is the problem.

 

[Flavia Daniele]

-) a classic B&W enlarger got a red filter to be swung-in to allow for positioning of the paper etc.under protective red lighting

-) some colour enlargers have a lever to pull-out the complete filter stack for focusing, metering etc. At releasing such lever the fliter stack will be repositioned in the positions set before.
Both Meopta colour-heads apt for your enlarger got such lever at both sides of the head.

So you are saying that if I pull up the 2 lever on head's side I'll switch the white light into filtered color?

 

[AgX]

The levers (both act the same way, thus operating one is sufficient) move the set filter stack in/out of the light beam.

 

[Flavia Daniele]

The levers (both act the same way, thus operating one is sufficient) move the set filter stack in/out of the light beam.

Perfect!! I'll try in this way and I'll see the results! thank you so much guys!!

 

[perkeleellinen]

Have cyan at zero, increase red (yellow and magenta) by +50cc.I reckon you may have your white light lever engaged.

 

[pentaxuser]

Have cyan at zero, increase red (yellow and magenta) by +50cc.I reckon you may have your white light lever engaged.

With the pictures this red and your filtration of 40 +40 then 60 +60 then I suspect as does perkeleellinen that your white light lever was engaged so was the light white all the time on the easel and if it was not engaged then the second set of pictures should have been noticeably less red but this does not appear to be the case

All points to white light lever engagement the whole time.

pentaxuser

 

[Wayne]

So you are saying that if I pull up the 2 lever on head's side I'll switch the white light into filtered color?

Have you mentioned what your enlarger is, because I haven't seen that info. It would really help so we can tell you exactly how to turn off the white light.

 

[AgX]

She got a Meopta Opemus 6 and thus either the 3 or 4ES head.

 

[Wayne]

She got a Meopta Opemus 6 and thus either the 3 or 4C head.

Ah...missed that since it wasn't capitalized.

 

[brbo]

The levers (both act the same way, thus operating one is sufficient) move the set filter stack in/out of the light beam.

The Meopta Color 3 head that I have has 2 levers, but one is for (dis)engaging of the density filter and the other for the colour (CMY) filtration. I only used this colour head briefly so can't tell you which (left or right) controls the colour filtration.

One more thing, when I got the Meopta Color 3 head the levers would move but wouldn't lower the filters into their place. I had to open the head and clean the railings. It's very easy. So, set the desired colour filtration and check if the light coming out responds to filtration changes and that the levers dis(engage) filtration properly.

 

[Martin Rickards]

If she has a Meopta 3 colour head, she should remember that the left hand lever is for removing colour correction filters, while the right hand lever operates the neutral density filter.

 

[AgX]

I stand corrected, I misinterpreted some Meopta wording.
(Furthermore, Meopta states same feature for heads 3 and 4ES, which is puzzling.)

 

[pentaxuser]

What's more important is: Was it the white light lever accidental engagement that was the problem? I hope the OP will tell us what she did based on what we have said.

Otherwise these threads are like the "murder story where the killer is revealed on the past page but that is the page that is missing

pentaxuser