RA-4 Printing Is Easier Than You Think

Hey Photrio!

First off, let me thank everyone who has responded to a question I've asked and anyone who responded to anyone else. This forum is an amazing source of information on color darkroom printing - the best I've found so far. Also a huge thank you to The Naked Photographer for his YouTube videos (Greg Davis on the forum I believe?).

My first color printing session was a total success! I've been anxious and worrying for weeks but it turns out this process can be very forgiving.

I was originally going to process using a drum, but later I realize open trays might be faster if I could find a way to time in the dark. It turns out my parent had been using old darkroom trays that came with the house for potted plants for years. I gave the a through clean, mixed up a liter of chemistry (Kodak Ektacolor) and started. Mixing the chemistry is by far the most tedious part of this. I might mix up the full 10L of my stuff next time because I don't want to do all that measuring 9 more times.

I did not think my prints were going to turn out at all. I realized the GraLab darkroom timer I bought was glow-in-the-dark. After turning the lights out and pulling out paper I noticed a small light leak in my garage/darkroom ceiling. I was worried my colors and density would be off because I don't have a voltage stabilizer for my enlarger (thank you to anyone who helped me in that thread).

It turns out this process is very forgiving. The GraLab timer isn't nearly bright enough to fog paper, the hole the ceiling wasn't either, and my colors and density are consistent. After a few trys, building up muscle memory doing it in open trays was super easy. I would expose my paper, unplug my timer from the enlarge to use it without turning the enlarger on. I set the timer for 10 minutes mostly just to see the second hand go around. My times were not super accurate - most were around 2 minutes, some maybe a little longer.

This is my first sheet. I brought the exposed paper over to the trays but put it in stop first on accident, blix, and then realized I had ran out of trays.

My second sheet, I actually put it in developer this time! The exposure times are way too long - but you can actually see an image a 2s over on the right. I also had a crisp white border so I was incredibly revealed that my paper wasn't getting fogged. This had me super excited. It turns out I forgot to stop down my lens and I set my enlarger to LOW light instead of HIGH. This basically adds a 2-stop neutral density. I am using a enlarger for 4x5 and a 4x5 mixing chamber so I guess LOW is pretty essential for a 35mm negative.

This is my third attempt - this had me super happy. I had an image, it was sharp and had good density. Most of these were too bright at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 seconds. (The last strip was accidently like 15 seconds). I decided to do another test strip at longer settings. My negative was also flipped so I fixed this.

Here is my fourth attempt. Not much to say here. I liked the 8s exposure (second from right) so I decided to do a full print there. I also added 6M to my starting 50Y, 50M. In my haste I had also been using the wrong negative. I have two of this scene taken back-to-back and one I prefer more. I switched the negatives out but didn't want to restart because the photos are essentially identical.

This is the first full print! My makeshift easel was misaligned and it still looked a little magenta, but I was close! I added 3M for a final filter pack of 0C, 50Y, 59M.

And here is the final print! If the colors look off it's because it's to replicate a physical print with a digital scan. Trust me everything looks great to my perfectionist eye in real life.


Again thank you to everyone of this site for your information and time. I am extremely excited to print more tonight!
Please feel free to ask questions or offer advice. The more information we put online about this amazing process the more people will want to do it and the more papers we might have to use.

Awesome! It’s been a while since I’ve done color prints... hoping to get back at it again

Damn it! Now I have to get off my ass and print at home. I got spoiled at Kodak with the Kreonite machine.

Yep, RA4 is easier than lore would have it. It's also a valuable lesson in being rigorous: having a trusted thermometer, working consistently and precisely, and learning how to make small corrections. I do it in drums on a Unicolor base, and it's pretty smooth sailing. Most of my energies are spent checking temps, adding hot or cold water to the water bath. But beyond that, it's all numbers: exposure, filter pack, rinse and repeat.

That said, to have pitch-perfect, super clean results takes a lot of energies. Fingerprints are rainbow-coloured, and they show quite visibly. Slight agitation variations, or light leaks can be deadly. But those are the same challenges that B&W possess, except that faults are more obvious in RA4.

That's inspiring — what paper are you using?

Ben 4 said:

That's inspiring — what paper are you using?

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Fuji Crystal Archive II - the only stuff still readily available in sheets. The film stock was Fuji Superia X-TRA 400.

This is very encouraging. Today is the first day my new darkroom is actually dark (had to adjust the weatherstripping on the door), and I used it to unload 35mm film from a 220 magazine; tomorrow I'll be processing some film that's stacked up while the construction was going on and set up at least one of my two enlargers, Omega D2V and D2/Chromega. Once everything is fully set up, I'll order in some color paper and start trying to print in color. Cross your fingers for me...

Donald Qualls said:

This is very encouraging. Today is the first day my new darkroom is actually dark (had to adjust the weatherstripping on the door), and I used it to unload 35mm film from a 220 magazine; tomorrow I'll be processing some film that's stacked up while the construction was going on and set up at least one of my two enlargers, Omega D2V and D2/Chromega. Once everything is fully set up, I'll order in some color paper and start trying to print in color. Cross your fingers for me...

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Keep us updated! The more poeple doing it and sharing their process the better.

Will do. I've already been asked for a darkroom portrait, after posting my darkroom in the "most recent photo related purchase" thread a couple weeks ago (when I paid the contractor who did the drywall and plumbing work). I almost went in, turned off the lights and disabled the flash on my phone, and made a "panorama"...

Yeah, nice job, I was making my first at home R4 prints in decades, didn't get as far, so far 5 test sheets, I think one more adjustent I will have a very good match. What tossed me is so little magenta, 5CC for my batch of paper.

RA-4 is simple and compared to black and white printing, cheap. I have been printing color for a few years now and it is one of my favorite ways to waste a day.

Consider buying paying in rolls and chopping it down to size. Kodak Endura is fantastic stuff.

Very nice print! RA-4 is a lot of fun. Super quick using trays and dead simple by running at room temperature. I find it very similar to black and white printing, except instead of controlling color contrast, you are controlling colour balance. It's very rewarding. As you correctly say, the "total darkness" is not such a rigid requirement. Of course you want to eliminate as much light as possible, but the phosphorescent paint on a gralab timer or an led across the room are unlikely to cause any problems.

RA4 printing is indeed easy - if everything goes well. If problems occur, they can be a b*tch to figure out, although it usually gives a lot of clues as to which parameters are critical and which ones not so much. For instance, with trays at room temperature, I find that neither temperature nor agitation are critical. Once you've determined an approach that works for you, it's pretty straightforward.

The real challenge in my experience is to produce negatives that are really worthwhile to print in color. Snapshots are nice of course, but I find that most of what I shoot just works better in b&w. I really have to put my mind to doing color, which I only manage from time to time. I can go out and get something worthwhile in b&w just about any given day, but color, maybe twice a month if I'm lucky...

Karl Ramberg said:

And here is the final print! If the colors look off it's because it's to replicate a physical print with a digital scan. Trust me everything looks great to my perfectionist eye in real life.

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I'll take your word for it; the digital image looks way too magenta and yellow to me. But scans can be deceptive. Don't forget to "neutralize" your color vision by taking breaks when printing. It's deceptively easy to end up with significant color casts without noticing them.

koraks said:

The real challenge in my experience is to produce negatives that are really worthwhile to print in color. Snapshots are nice of course, but I find that most of what I shoot just works better in b&w. I really have to put my mind to doing color, which I only manage from time to time. I can go out and get something worthwhile in b&w just about any given day, but color, maybe twice a month if I'm lucky...

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I can relate to this - I think many boring color shots won't look much better just because they are handprinted. But, I do think good ones can be elevated. I printed a blue hour shot last night and it is simply lovely. I think it really benefits from continuous tone and the blue/purple cast I easily gave it.

Don't you think the most difficult thing is color balance? At least, it is for me.
I usually need three or four tests to get it (approx) right.
With a color analyzer and a gray surface, it is much easier. But printing "random" negatives is quite time consuming (though, very fun to do if you are in the mood).

I don't know about total darkness being essential. I always do RA-4 in absolute darkness. Once a tiny leak spoiled a print, and never experimented again. From there on, I even cover the timer (which has a very dim orange light, totally safe for B&W jobs). Maybe this is not even necessary

No, it's not harder than black & white, just different.

To avoid even slight color casts, check that the white items in the print are truly white.

Once you establish times and color balance for your enlarger, film, and chemicals you usually can make final prints, or at least come close on the first print, i.e., I haven't found it necessary to do test prints each time. This is the benefit of using the same film and developing your film and prints with a consistent method.

mklw1954 said:

Once you establish times and color balance for your enlarger, film, and chemicals you usually can make final prints, or at least come close on the first print, i.e., I haven't found it necessary to do test prints each time. This is the benefit of using the same film and developing your film and prints with a consistent method.

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Before the printing process went digital, this is how small local labs handled most consumer processing (as far as I've understood): they had settings for each film they might expect to see, and just printed to those settings. If your film was underexposed, you'd get dark prints. Later, you'd still get dark prints, but they'd have a strong green tint -- I figures that was the automatic machines trying to "save" the image. These days, you'll get a grainy, noisy print with whatever image their scanner was able to pull out of the film...

Well, the older analog mini labs read the film code on the edge of the frame, old negatives without codes were set for a generic setting the operator then made adjustments. The last models of digital machines read each frame and calculated the filters needed, no codes required. I printed negatives from the 50s and 40s that had well stored, the Fuji Frontier did a remarkable job of printing. With the older units you could figure out who made 3rd party film. In the 90s Walmart sold Polaroid 35mm 100, 200, and 400, it read Fujicolor, while Chinese Lucky was coded for an version of Kodacolor, Kodak had sold China an entire film coating line in the 80s.