RA4 printing wedding photographs.

Hello everybody.

I was wondering if anybody on here could give me some advice about using RA4 colour paper in a Nova temperature controlled deep tank?

As background, I'm a wedding photographer based in the UK. Up until now I have been sending my film (Fuji) to a pro lab to get them developed and all printed to 6x4 for 6.49 Uk pounds, some of them being placed into the album and some being enlarged to 10x8 and above for the rest of the album.

However, I have recently inherited a 16x12 4 slot nova temperature controlled deep tank, which has got me investigating colour printing. I have many years experience of black and white working in a nova 16x12 monochrome deeptank, but never colour. How difficult is it to print colour properly? Could I match the Fuji crystal output from my lab accurately? I have a colour enlarger - a Durst Modular 70 colour and multigrade (plus a few Meoptas). I also have what I think is a colour analyser/timer - a Bauerle/Stag 785 (btw, anybody got an instruction manual for this timer, I cant work it out for the life of me).

I am doing this in an attempt to bring down my costs. I'm thinking of using Fuji ra4 chemicals and paper (crystal archive - what my lab uses) in my new nova deep tank. The savings are enormous - I pay UK pounds 4.08 (approx 8 dollars) for a ten by eight print, but a sheet of 10x8 Fuji paper is only 28 pence (approx 60 US cents) to purchase. Of course, this does not include the chemicals or my time, but that's okay. Its a two hour drive to my lab and back and I have to do that every few weeks to drop off and pick up.

So, questions:

1. How easy is it to use ra4 colour chem and paper in a nova deeptank? Will my output closely match the labs output?

2. Am I mad? Everybody else has gone digital, but I still prefer film.

3. Would I benefit from getting a 'micro module' for my Durst, or similar?

4. Do you think it is cost effective from a business standpoint? 28 pence per sheet of 10x8 is very compelling, not to mention 4 5x4s off a single sheet with a multi aperture easel.

5. Anybody else still printing colour themselves here?

Thanks very very much.

Kris.

I printed color for years with a tabletop RA-4 processor. You probably won't be able to "match" the prints you have made at a lab, as they would surely be made on a machine such as a Fuji Frontier, which scans the negative and exposes the paper with a laser. This can give more equalized results (in smaller prints) than you can achieve with an enlarger. I never felt it economical (in time expended) to make small prints (smaller than 7x5). If you are very consistent in your film exposusre techniques, then it may go fairly easily for you. Consider..to make 4 5x4 prints on an 10x8 sheet, you compose and adjust the enlarger for the first image, then turn off, take paper from paper safe insert into easel and expose, then put paper back in paper safe, set up for next image, turn off lights, remove paper from paper safe and put into easel, expose, put paper back in paper safe, and so on. Quite time consuming. The labs that do small prints efficiently use roll paper. Years ago I worked in a studio lab that had a Nord color enlarger and Nord roll paper easel. The enlarger was auto-focus, and the roll-paper easel had a lid that came down over the exposure area of the paper, so you could expose, close the lid, push a button to advance the paper, turn on the room lights and exchange your negative in the enlarger. This made for speedier work, but it required a roll paper print processor, and then hand cutting the prints apart with a tabletop paper cutter when processed. I guess it all depends on how much value you place on your time, and if you can make more money shooting than printing. For me, I found that anything smaller than 7x5 was best left to a lab equipped to make small prints on roll paper with automatic equipment.

Btw, I've ordered the Kodak Print Viewing Filter Kit off Ebay recently... Hope this helps me.

Kris.

I agree Phototone, that's why I leave have my rolls dev'd and printed to 6x4 inches and then use these in the album. I don't think it's viable to print all the album images myself.

I only need to enlarge maybe ten or twenty 10x8's per album. Is ths still viable? How long will the ra4 chemicals last in the Nova deeptank? My main wedding season lasts maybe 6 months, though if I get a handle on colour printing, I may take it up more seriously for my personal work as well.

Kris.

You should drain your processor at the end of each day of use, (with small processors), drain back into amber bottles. Both chemicals in the RA-4 process (developer, blix) do not have very long tank life in an unreplenished state, and even with replenishment, the life in a small processor is not very good. The developer will "tar up" and the blix will form a sludge..and you will start getting prints without solid blacks...they will be blue-ish.

This advice applies to small "table top" processors. The machines used in mini-labs, such as the Fuji Frontier have large tanks, and normally have high volume use, which keeps the chemistry stable with constant replenishment.

As far as color balance is concerned, use the same film for the whole wedding...once you get an acceptable color balance on one typical image from a wedding, all the others should print at the same balance, unless you are shooting under widely changing lighting mixtures. The overall "balance" of modern color negative films and RA-4 print papers is very stable.

If you "really" want to print your 8x10's in your own studio, I would suggest you try to get a small automatic table-top processor, such as a Nutek, Durst or Fujimoto. These are much easier to manage than a Nova, which requires "hands-on" processing. With the above mentioned tabletop processors, they are basically automatic and daylight operating except for feeding the paper in, and once you feed the paper in and close the lid, you can turn the lights back on and go about setting up the next negative while the previous print is processing, so you can have a much more productive workflow, than if you had to manually dip-n-dunk each sheet thru a hand-fed processor. These motor-driven tabletop processors can be purchased very reasonably quite frequently on popular auction sites. The larger ones have auto-replenishment and wash-dry modules available.

Kristian,
Go for it but do not expect to get it right quickly or easily. You posted this question on photo.net and the answer there are still relevant. It is the speed of the thing that will drive you mad. Ages in the dark with a nova only to find a poor print at the end of it requiring lots of filtration tweaks and beware the subjectivity of printing. After a load of dodgy prints you may just think you have cracked it and then print a load of good ones. In the morning you look at them and decide they are all green and awful. The pain can be immense. However; get it right and you are able to crop and colour match until your own personal perfection and satisfaction is gained. This in itself could be a slow process at even the best pro labs. Photography is subjective so suck it and see. Just a final note. Use Kodak Fuji or Agfa (they are made again) chemicals, resist anything that is single component chemistry. Make sure you have an an excellent power supply to your enlarger and try to get a quality colour analyser. If you have a dodgy power source forget it. Every print will be different even seconds apart. The colour temperature of the light source in the enlarger will be all over the place and so filtration and analysis will be impossible.
Good Luck.
Richard Harris.

Yes, I did post it on Photo.net. Small world....

I'll add one word: consistency. Do things the same way time after time, starting with the film you use and going on through the C-41 chemicals you use, the C-41 temperature and processing style, the RA-4 paper brand, everything about your enlarger, the RA-4 chemicals, and the RA-4 temperature. If you start changing things, your results will vary and you'll end up spending an hour figuring out the right color balance. (Viewing filters, color analyzers, and other tools can help, but in my experience there's no substitute for making a print.) If you keep everything consistent, you're less likely to end up spending ages trying to get the right color balance.

Q.-Kristian= ... 5. Anybody else still printing colour themselves here?
A.-naknak= Yes. But I'm doing it for fun, not for the money.

Yeah, I thought that, maybe it will take the fun out of the darkroom.

Then again, my 16x12 wedding images sell at 50 UK pounds a pop, enough for maybe 75 sheets of 16x12 Fuji crystal. Feeds the habit. And the cat.

KH

I feed my habit paying the following sum:
1) Bulk Fuji Cr.Arch. 90mx20cm= 40 Euro (E)
2) Tetenal RA 4, 500ml = 26 E
3) Color Film = 3 E (average)
4) Lab.Develop.= 1,3 E

I usually cut bulk paper in about 16cm sheets. Thus, I have one 20x16cm or two 10x16cm prints. I dilute 20ml RA-4 into 100ml water and keep it in small bottles of 120ml. Processing goes into handholding JoboDrum 1525 that takes one 20x25cm print (maximum size). Paper and chemicals last for me more than a year. Mostly, I develop 5 or 6 prints in an hour. Everything is done at room/water temperature 19-25 Celsius.