New RA4 colour paper

[koraks]

I use Fuji; haven't tried Kodak. But honestly, I'm willing to bet a decent bottle of wine on it working fine in Kodak chemistry as well.

 

[RPC]

The post of PE referred to above is outdated. I use the current Fuji CA II paper with Kodak RA-RT replenisher at room temperatures and around 2 minute development time with great results, almost identical to any Kodak cut-sheet paper I have ever used and I have been printing for years. YMMV.

Kodak has never promoted the capability of the RA-RT replenisher used as a developer at room temperatures, as PE has acknowledged. He was probably the first to discover it gave excellent results.

 

[brbo]

^ +1

Tried Fuji CAII with Kodak RT/LU and everything was fine at room temp. Same as @35ºC that I normally use because it's faster.

 

[DREW WILEY]

You can use any standard RA4 kit with Fuji paper. Fuji tends to sell their own chem directly to the same labs which order volume paper in rolls directly from them. But I've used Kodak Ra/Rt "starter" kits as well as Silver Pixel and Arista kits from Freestyle in LA interchangeably. They all seem to be identical formulas. This is for one-shot use in drums or trays. If you have a roller-transport replenishment system, you'll need an additional stabilizer. Don't confuse any of these with so-called room temp kits; I've never personally had good results with those. And I'll never work with RA4 in trays for health reasons. But with a basic water jacket around your main developer tray, it should be easy to sustain precise temperature in a tray. I do it all the time that way with sheet film development, which needs to be even more precise. Ideally, the inner tray containing actual developer would be made of stainless steel for better heat transfer, while the surrounding larger water jacket tray would be of thicker plastic to retain heat. The Blix is a little more tolerant of temp swings. But the main point is simply to standardize on a consistent development temperature for sake or predictability. If you select 20C (68F) "room temp", try to stay within plus or minus 3 degrees F of that if possible.

 

[nickandre]

Do you guys use Nova processors? That seems like the easiest method plus it seems compact in area. If not a drum of some sort would be nice and I can use chemistry from a water bath. Are there good drums for 16x20 prints available?

I used trays because it was high school and I was trying to do it as cheaply as humanly possible. These days I have a job so...

I did note that the problems seemed specific to one of the Fuji papers. So hopefully that's it

 

[DREW WILEY]

Lots of used drums turn up on EBay. A good roller device at reasonable price might take more patience to acquire. But in the interim, you could simply roll the drum gently back and forth along the sink bed itself. Some people have done that for enormous home-made drums, rolling them on a shaded sidewalk! I'll be back to my own drum machine in a moment; it can handle up to 30X40 inch print drums, though today I'm just doing RA4 test strips and one 20X24 print. I have used various Fuji papers : Super C in several sheens, CAII (the only version currently available in pre-cut sheets), Fujiflex Supergloss (really deluxe but expensive, and available only in heavy wide rolls); and now I'm trying to order a roll of Maxima, Fuji's new top-of-the-line RC paper.

 

[Wayne]

Weird. Mine says “Fujicolor Professional Paper” on the back of it.

Edit: wrong receipt that was film lol. The paper I believe I printed this on is “Fujicolor Crystal Archive Super P”

it would be great news if I didn’t have to cut down Kodak rolls…I suppose I could try again to see if I was doing anything foolish at the time. Photo Engineer was the one that suggested the Kodak papers were routinely tested at lower temps than Fuji.

Mine just says Crystal Archive. Different paper, perhaps, but I've never had crossover troubles at room temp that I'm aware of.