RA-4 Cyan Cast

Aidan Sciortino · Thursday at 1:46 AM

Got a fresh box of the Adox Color Mission paper, along with a fresh kit of Arista RA-4 Chemistry.

I’m a decent black and white printer, but I can’t get my head around RA-4. I’m using the tri-color additive method (wratten 25, 58, and 47B) with my 45MX, and developing in my jobo drums.

I consistently get prints with a heavy cyan cast that only affects the image area. At first I blamed the red LEDs of my timer, but I’ve eliminated this as a factor and my problems persist.

I figured a good way to diagnose would be to expose my test image only through the green and blue filters, exposing the Magenta- and Yellow-forming layers of the emulsion hopefully giving me an incredibly red print.

This failed miserably, giving me a strange Cyan-Green print, photo attached.

I’m so confused, and feel like I’m going crazy.

koraks · Thursday at 1:51 AM

OK, first, have you eliminated any possibility of a mixing error? Also, is there any possibility whatsoever of the developer being contaminated with blix (although I'd expect cyan marks on the white borders in that case)?

One thing you should test is to take a strip of fully exposed paper (exposed to normal room light) and process it normally. Wash and dry (!) This should of course come out pitch black. Please verify if this indeed happens.

Getting a low-contrast, cyan print when using blue & green filters is pretty darn odd indeed. Are these filters in good condition (can you post a photo of them)?

Out of curiosity - are you doing three consecutive exposures with different times?

Aidan Sciortino · Thursday at 2:04 AM

koraks said:
OK, first, have you eliminated any possibility of a mixing error? Also, is there any possibility whatsoever of the developer being contaminated with blix (although I'd expect cyan marks on the white borders in that case)?

I re-mixed fresh developer in a new bottle when I started observing the problem. The bottle contained dilute photo flo previously but I washed it out thoroughly along with my mixing equipment.

koraks said:
Getting a low-contrast, cyan print when using blue & green filters is pretty darn odd indeed. Are these filters in good condition (can you post a photo of them)?

I got them from the classifieds here last week, they’re beautiful! Photograph attached.

koraks said:
Out of curiosity - are you doing three consecutive exposures with different times?

Yes, in the example I posted I didn’t do a red exposure; 10 seconds of green, 36 of blue.

I did introduce a stop as well when I started seeing this issue, 30 seconds between the dev and blix.

Aidan Sciortino · Thursday at 2:10 AM

This is the paper which I exposed to room light and subsequently developed. I’m waiting for it to dry now. Is this how it normally looks wet? Or perhaps the cyan-producing layer is the only layer getting any development?

koraks said:
One thing you should test is to take a strip of fully exposed paper (exposed to normal room light) and process it normally. Wash and dry (!) This should of course come out pitch black. Please verify if this indeed happens.

mshchem · Thursday at 2:35 AM

fujifilm crystal archive paper has a blue color before development, most of the color rinses off in prewet. I use yellow and magenta filtration dichro, before the dichro I used acetate yellow and magenta CC filters.

What you are doing should work when you hit the right combination. Tricky.

Aidan Sciortino · Thursday at 2:40 AM

A few more data points before I must leave the darkroom for the evening;

The Color Mission, exposed to full room light and developed, dried down to a bright cyan without any other color;

Additionally, I had a few sheets of endura on hand, now four years expired. I cut one down and exposed it too to room light, and got this back;

Since both sheets came out weird, this leads me to think it’s likely something is wrong with my chemistry. Perhaps I’ll invest in some of the Kodak Minilab chemistry instead of continuing to try and get this arista kit to work

koraks · Thursday at 2:59 AM

This looks like gross underdevelopment to me. What temperature and time do you use for development? Is the developer fresh (i.e. not expired/old stock)? I'm not familiar with the Arista product; do you have some documentation for it?

Aidan Sciortino · Thursday at 3:05 AM

Thanks so much for the help! The kit instructions are here; https://www.freestylephoto.com/pdf/product_pdfs/arista/AristaRA4.pdf

I’m developing for 2 minutes and 25 seconds at 26.5 degrees Celsius, which is what the instructions recommend. I’m not replenishing, I’m just using it one-shot and tossing while I figure out the filtration thing.

koraks · Thursday at 3:10 AM

I don't see any fault in what you're describing. What is/was the color of the developer concentrates, in particular the smallest bottle (I think that's B in this kit)?

Aidan Sciortino · Thursday at 10:26 AM

koraks said:
I don't see any fault in what you're describing. What is/was the color of the developer concentrates, in particular the smallest bottle (I think that's B in this kit)?

Bottle B is this “straw” color; it’s a little more pinkish to my eye than my iPhone camera renders it.

Something is also fishy with the printed instructions that came with the kit. Notably the mixing instructions differ heavily from those online, and the ratios are off;

Aidan Sciortino · 2025-08-22T01:26:51-0400

I remixed the chemistry today according to the online instructions, and my results are now quite good.

I’ll send freestyle an email to let them know about the error, and I’ll post some results when the prints dry.

Only problem now is that this is habit-forming and I’m going to need more color chemistry and paper

koraks · 2025-08-22T02:24:00-0400

Ah, perfect! Good job on figuring this out! The instructions Freestyle supplied with the chemistry appear to be for a completely different product. What a silly mistake. I'm happy to hear your printing is now satisfactory again!

Aidan Sciortino said:
need more color chemistry and paper

Fortunately, these are generally in decent supply. If you intend to do a lot of printing, you could consider getting paper in rolls instead of boxes of cut sheet. It's generally a lot cheaper that way. You may also be able to obtain higher-quality papers that way since much of the cut sheet around is plain-Jane Crystal Archive and that's technically their most entry-level product (see the mottling on the cyan print you made; it's a 'feature' of this paper).

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