Afternoon all,
I'm currently trying to learn darkroom colour printing at home and have an issue I could really use some advice on.
Earlier in the summer, I bought two of Tetenal's Magic Box RA4 starter kits and hoped to process colour prints in a Paterson Orbital that I'd picked up on ebay. I had pretty unsuccessful results with the first of the two kits but I'm keen to give the process another bash and just want to figure out where I went wrong before I mix up the second batch.
The kit states that it is capable of producing 18-25 sheets of 8x10 paper before the chemicals are exhausted but this was not my experience at all. During the first evening of using the kit - I processed a handful of test strips and three whole 8x10 sheets before landing on a print I was happy with. The following evening I tried to re-use the chemicals and found that every piece of paper came out of the Orbital with brown/yellow stains randomly placed on the prints, which couldn't be washed off.
I'll summarise the way I processed the paper in the Orbital in the following (as per the kit's instructions):
- Everything was processed at 30°C
- Prewash - 60 seconds
- Developer - 100 seconds
- Stop - 15 seconds
- Blix - 100 seconds
- Wash - 30 seconds x 8
- Stabiliser - 60 seconds
I rinsed the tank in between these steps to try to avoid cross contamination between the chemicals and thoroughly washed and dried the Orbital before loading more paper into it.
I was using Fuji Crystal Archive paper.
Tetenal suggest that these chemicals can be re-used but I'm wondering if re-using them was what caused this issue? If used one shot, this batch would be over very quickly but perhaps that's what I should have done? Does anyone have any advice on colour printing with an Orbital? Is it best to always do things one-shot with this type of processor?
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
Dave
I'm currently trying to learn darkroom colour printing at home and have an issue I could really use some advice on.
Earlier in the summer, I bought two of Tetenal's Magic Box RA4 starter kits and hoped to process colour prints in a Paterson Orbital that I'd picked up on ebay. I had pretty unsuccessful results with the first of the two kits but I'm keen to give the process another bash and just want to figure out where I went wrong before I mix up the second batch.
The kit states that it is capable of producing 18-25 sheets of 8x10 paper before the chemicals are exhausted but this was not my experience at all. During the first evening of using the kit - I processed a handful of test strips and three whole 8x10 sheets before landing on a print I was happy with. The following evening I tried to re-use the chemicals and found that every piece of paper came out of the Orbital with brown/yellow stains randomly placed on the prints, which couldn't be washed off.
I'll summarise the way I processed the paper in the Orbital in the following (as per the kit's instructions):
- Everything was processed at 30°C
- Prewash - 60 seconds
- Developer - 100 seconds
- Stop - 15 seconds
- Blix - 100 seconds
- Wash - 30 seconds x 8
- Stabiliser - 60 seconds
I rinsed the tank in between these steps to try to avoid cross contamination between the chemicals and thoroughly washed and dried the Orbital before loading more paper into it.
I was using Fuji Crystal Archive paper.
Tetenal suggest that these chemicals can be re-used but I'm wondering if re-using them was what caused this issue? If used one shot, this batch would be over very quickly but perhaps that's what I should have done? Does anyone have any advice on colour printing with an Orbital? Is it best to always do things one-shot with this type of processor?
Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks,
Dave