Nailed it on the first try!

Dave Starr · Dec 17, 2005

Thought I'd try some RA-4 in my new (old) Jobo CPP-2 the other day. Mixed up a Tetenal kit I had on hand & discovered the blix was no good. Ckecked the date code - week 15 of 2004. OOPS! Didn't think I had it that long. Well, Calumet's got Kodak in stock, and I've been wanting to try it, so I ordered it. Ordered it Thursday, got it Friday; Calumet's only 300 miles from here. I picked a negative I haven't printed yet - a 4x5 shot of fall colors on VC-160. I wasn't sure how different chemistry would affect filtration, so I used what I do for 35mm contacts - 60M, 75Y. Picked 12 seconds for an initial exposure (8x10) and processed it.

WOW!!

Perfect on the first try!!!! Wonder how many years it'll be until I di that again? Exposure's right on, color balance and saturation are great. I don't think I've ever got saturation & balance this good from Tetenal. Now I'm all fired up to print more, but I've got to go out of town for a Christmas party. But, tomorrow, and Monday, and........... I know where I'll be!

pentaxuser · Dec 17, 2005

Dave Starr said:
Thought I'd try some RA-4 in my new (old) Jobo CPP-2 the other day. Mixed up a Tetenal kit I had on hand & discovered the blix was no good. Ckecked the date code - week 15 of 2004. OOPS! Didn't think I had it that long. Well, Calumet's got Kodak in stock, and I've been wanting to try it, so I ordered it. Ordered it Thursday, got it Friday; Calumet's only 300 miles from here. I picked a negative I haven't printed yet - a 4x5 shot of fall colors on VC-160. I wasn't sure how different chemistry would affect filtration, so I used what I do for 35mm contacts - 60M, 75Y. Picked 12 seconds for an initial exposure (8x10) and processed it.

WOW!!

Perfect on the first try!!!! Wonder how many years it'll be until I di that again? Exposure's right on, color balance and saturation are great. I don't think I've ever got saturation & balance this good from Tetenal. Now I'm all fired up to print more, but I've got to go out of town for a Christmas party. But, tomorrow, and Monday, and........... I know where I'll be!

Well done. Maybe you won't ever need to do it again. It seems to me that if you stick to the same paper, film and print size for exposure then at least all similar scenes should be very close to OK on this filtration. I find that a change to indoor, poor light scenes will alter print exposure but this may be due to my underexposing such scenes.

While Kodak gives a suggested filtration on its RA4 paper pdf doc, Fuji don't. I cannot understand why this information isn't given to help newcomers. Looking at old colour processing books indicates that suggested filtration was once provided. In a previous thread a number of subscribers said it still was. Well all I can say is that I have examined a box of both Kodak and Fuji RA4 and I cannot find anything.

Pentaxuser

roteague · Dec 17, 2005

Which paper did you print it on?

Dave Starr · Dec 17, 2005

"Which paper did you print it on?"

Supra Endura glossy.

I've got some Fuji C that I always had trouble getting the filtration right with. I actually was into using cyan! I'll have to try the Fuji paper with the Kodak chems & see what happens.

Photo Engineer · Dec 17, 2005

Kodak Endura paper has a suggested filtration on the box. There are about 3 different suggestions out there right now, as EK is adjusting the speed of the magenta and yellow layers in the new Endura paper away from Supra III.

The reason in the past was simply this. In small batch sizes with the early color paper emulsions, the speeds of the 3 layers varied from batch to batch. Each batch had to have a set of suggested starting filters. Once you had that down pat, you could use the difference between your old batch and a new batch to calculate the change in filtration with the new batch.

There was also a speed recomendation such as 1.1 or 0.9 which was a speed multiplier that you used to get the exposure time. Once down pat, again you could use this to calculate the exposure time needed for a new batch of paper (taking into account the filter factor of the new filter pack as well). This was a tedious process.

Today, color paper can be made to a fixed speed and balance just like film, and therefore the recommendation on the box can remain constant and you get good results over and over again. The only time they change is when the mfgr comes out with a new paper or has to make a formulation change. Right now, Endura is stable with the third pack I've seen. It has seemed to stay that way for about 2 years.

You will still see the filter pack on every box of Kodak paper. The balance is always on the red side. It is red to avoid every having to need cyan filtration. It is there also to get good speed separation between the R, G and B layers when printing through the orange mask. The blue layer is about 1.0 Log E faster than the red layer and the green layer is about 0.6 log E faster than the red. The red sensitive layer is the layer that determines the speed of the paper and therefore you should keep that one unaffected by filtration in order to make the filtration adjustments go more smoothly. This combination of 1.0 and 0.6 end up close to the 50 Red recommended by so many as a good starting point for making your first print when you include the orange mask of the negative.

PE

pentaxuser · Dec 17, 2005

Photo Engineer said:
Kodak Endura paper has a suggested filtration on the box. There are about 3 different suggestions out there right now, as EK is adjusting the speed of the magenta and yellow layers in the new Endura paper away from Supra III.

The reason in the past was simply this. In small batch sizes with the early color paper emulsions, the speeds of the 3 layers varied from batch to batch. Each batch had to have a set of suggested starting filters. Once you had that down pat, you could use the difference between your old batch and a new batch to calculate the change in filtration with the new batch.

There was also a speed recomendation such as 1.1 or 0.9 which was a speed multiplier that you used to get the exposure time. Once down pat, again you could use this to calculate the exposure time needed for a new batch of paper (taking into account the filter factor of the new filter pack as well). This was a tedious process.

Today, color paper can be made to a fixed speed and balance just like film, and therefore the recommendation on the box can remain constant and you get good results over and over again. The only time they change is when the mfgr comes out with a new paper or has to make a formulation change. Right now, Endura is stable with the third pack I've seen. It has seemed to stay that way for about 2 years.

You will still see the filter pack on every box of Kodak paper. The balance is always on the red side. It is red to avoid every having to need cyan filtration. It is there also to get good speed separation between the R, G and B layers when printing through the orange mask. The blue layer is about 1.0 Log E faster than the red layer and the green layer is about 0.6 log E faster than the red. The red sensitive layer is the layer that determines the speed of the paper and therefore you should keep that one unaffected by filtration in order to make the filtration adjustments go more smoothly. This combination of 1.0 and 0.6 end up close to the 50 Red recommended by so many as a good starting point for making your first print when you include the orange mask of the negative.

PE

Your reply prompted me to go into the darkroom and check a box of Kodak Supra Endura I have. The front merely has the name on it. The side facing me has the name again plus the paper size and CAT 388 3139 and underneath this the numbers and letters 011 BHS and underneath again the numbers 1621 60.The other sides have nothing.The back has such things as limitation of liability and storage recommendations in 4 european languages including English and the words Made in England by Kodak Ltd for KODAK Professional Division.

Could this be the key to why you see filtration and I don't. Namely that my paper is made in England and is for the european market.

If so, it begs the question why filtration should appear on your packet and not on mine. If it's needed in the U.S. then it's needed in the U.K and anywhere else the paper is used.

Still puzzled

Pentaxuser

Photo Engineer · Dec 17, 2005

How odd.

My last box has the following on the bottom:

Test print starting filtration 0C + 60M + 45Y. This is in 4 languages, English, French, German and Spanish.

I know that paper produced at Harrow used to have the filtration on it, as we used to get a lot of it in for comparisons at KRL. So, you are right, unless the situation was so under control that they decided to eliminate it entirely in the last few months.

Also interesting is the catalog # on my 100 sheet 8x10 box. It is 883 2297 the first 3 digits being the reverse of yours. The other numbers give information about coating location and date.

PE

pentaxuser · Dec 17, 2005

Photo Engineer said:
How odd.

My last box has the following on the bottom:

Test print starting filtration 0C + 60M + 45Y. This is in 4 languages, English, French, German and Spanish.

I know that paper produced at Harrow used to have the filtration on it, as we used to get a lot of it in for comparisons at KRL. So, you are right, unless the situation was so under control that they decided to eliminate it entirely in the last few months.

Also interesting is the catalog # on my 100 sheet 8x10 box. It is 883 2297 the first 3 digits being the reverse of yours. The other numbers give information about coating location and date.

PE

I have just looked at the Supra Endura pdf dated May 2004. It suggests a starting filtration of 65M and 55Y which suggests that it needs 5M more and 10Y more than your batch of paper. If your paper is post May 2004 this suggests that paper filtration isn't standardised on 65M and 55Y. Yet my box carries no filtration which suggests it has standardised and expects users to know the content of the pdf. If Kodak has standardised in the last few months, it is presumably on 65M and 55Y as the pdf has not been updated since May 2004. If Kodak have standardised on 65M and 55Y then I would have thought that 5M and 10Y more was enough to suggest that since May 2004 Kodak believes that its paper needs less red filtration than your Endura does. My paper if it were the same as yours would be too red on 60M and 45Y. It isn't clear if this is filtration in a Kodak head but I would assume it is. As I understand it 5M on a Kodak enlarger is appreciably less than, say, 5M on a Durst enlarger so a difference between 60M and 65M on Kodak enlarger is small but 10Y (55Y v 45Y) even on a Kodak head is appreciable.

There would still appear to be some inconsistencies here which I cannot explain.

Any ideas?

Pentaxuser

Photo Engineer · Dec 17, 2005

pentaxuser said:
I have just looked at the Supra Endura pdf dated May 2004. It suggests a starting filtration of 65M and 55Y which suggests that it needs 5M more and 10Y more than your batch of paper. If your paper is post May 2004 this suggests that paper filtration isn't standardised on 65M and 55Y. Yet my box carries no filtration which suggests it has standardised and expects users to know the content of the pdf. If Kodak has standardised in the last few months, it is presumably on 65M and 55Y as the pdf has not been updated since May 2004. If Kodak have standardised on 65M and 55Y then I would have thought that 5M and 10Y more was enough to suggest that since May 2004 Kodak believes that its paper needs less red filtration than your Endura does. My paper if it were the same as yours would be too red on 60M and 45Y. It isn't clear if this is filtration in a Kodak head but I would assume it is. As I understand it 5M on a Kodak enlarger is appreciably less than, say, 5M on a Durst enlarger so a difference between 60M and 65M on Kodak enlarger is small but 10Y (55Y v 45Y) even on a Kodak head is appreciable.

There would still appear to be some inconsistencies here which I cannot explain.

Any ideas?

Pentaxuser

Well, first off I have paper with that more modern filter pack in my freezer it turns out. Sorry about that. I keep one batch in the DR and the rest in the freezer.

Second, there is no "Kodak head" AFAIK. We used Chromegas and Beselers in the labs. They pretty much matched straight Omega and Besseler heads when we compared dicrhoic with Wratten Filters. The big problem was that the Wratten filters faded more rapidly than dichroic filters (well, some vs essentially zero) and so there were errors in interpretation in the early stages of R&D on filters for color and for variable contrast B&W papers. I remember the day we replaced our chromeaga filters and had to recalibrate everything.

PE

PE

pentaxuser · Dec 19, 2005

Photo Engineer said:
Well, first off I have paper with that more modern filter pack in my freezer it turns out. Sorry about that. I keep one batch in the DR and the rest in the freezer.

Second, there is no "Kodak head" AFAIK. We used Chromegas and Beselers in the labs. They pretty much matched straight Omega and Besseler heads when we compared dicrhoic with Wratten Filters. The big problem was that the Wratten filters faded more rapidly than dichroic filters (well, some vs essentially zero) and so there were errors in interpretation in the early stages of R&D on filters for color and for variable contrast B&W papers. I remember the day we replaced our chromeaga filters and had to recalibrate everything.

PE

PE

Sounds very much as if Kodak gives suggested filtration on its packs destined for the U.S. market but not for the european. Fuji on the other hand seems not to give even a suggested filtration on its pdf on its Crystal Archive paper.

You'd think both would try to help users as much as possible to promote its paper

For what it is worth, I have tried both and other than a recalibration of my colour analyser, I could see no difference in the quality of either paper.

Pentaxuser

Nailed it on the first try!

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