RA-4 Developer and Blix formula wanted

[Stew]

Would anyone have a good formula for RA-4 Developer and Bleach/Fix that they would like to share.

Thanks
Rob.

 

[Nick Zentena]

There are the ones on this website:

http://www.bonavolta.ch/hobby/en/photo/c41_ra4_chemicals.htm

I think PE doesn't like them-)

I'm not sure it makes sense to make your own. The kits from Fotochem aren't that expensive. Or the bulk chemicals from people like Fuji or Kodak aren't that bad either. Blix will keep. In my expierence even the developer keeps fairly well.

 

[Stew]

Nick,
I bought one of the fotochem kits a few weeks ago but I was kind of worried about using it because all the bottles of chemicals I got were labeled C-41!!

 

[pentaxuser]

This may be where the big pond divides us as far as chems are concerned but I have used Tetenal and then Paterson. This is based on U.K. prices and availability but I found Paterson to be considerably cheaper but equally as good.

Pentaxuser

 

[Photo Engineer]

There was a URL to a new RA developer posted on PN about a month ago. It looked pretty good. All of the previous errors I saw in it were fixed. It is almost like the real thing!

Not all kits out there are good. Never use a CD4 based kit or formula for paper.

PE

 

[Nick Zentena]

Nick,
I bought one of the fotochem kits a few weeks ago but I was kind of worried about using it because all the bottles of chemicals I got were labeled C-41!!

Did you complain? IIRC the RA-4 kit is five bottles. I think three for the developer and two for the blix.

 

[srs5694]

I've used the one linked to by Nick with (to my subjective eye) good results, using Kodak and Fuji papers. I can't speak to archival qualities, though. Another one is described here:

http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~keirst/technical.html

This might be the one to which PE referred, but I'm not positive of that. I've not yet tried it, since it contains some chemicals I haven't tracked down. (I've not tried all that hard, but I'm pretty sure I checked some of the popular photochemical suppliers, such as Photographer's Formulary and Art Craft.)