Setting up a color darkroom advice ? ( or talk me out of it :) )

[Larry Gebhardt]

I agree on the RA4 ventilation. I ran my processor in the darkroom before I installed the vent fan. My lungs felt tight for a few days. I'm sure it wasn't healthy. I wouldn't do tray development without a strong exhaust over the trays.

[Drew Wiley]

Cars and stoplights don't even come with MSDS sheets. You still gotta use common sense with em if you don't want to become roadkill. Don't argue with me. I already know the facts, including friends whose lab careers were ended outright by being macho with this kind of stuff. I've spent most of my life having this or that "artiste"or research chemist tell me how harmless something was, and then watching them go into middle age utterly debilitated or even extinct. Listen to the old timers. If you insist on learning the hard way, it's your lungs, not mine! And if it's not "if" someone is sensitive to it (already) - it's when. And that is something which can happen suddenly, unexpectedly. You can design ventilation flow across your trays, to a collection point away from you. But then it will be tricky to keep temperature constant on a large open surface like that. I'm not trying to scare anyone away from RA4. It's basically fun and simple. But the chemistry certainly must be handled more carefully than garden-variety black-and-white chemicals.

[RMiksell]

I've had good results with the arista ra-4 kit from freestyle and Fuji crystal archive paper. I actually dilute the developer and blix 1:4 and process for 4 min in each at 70f in trays.

[Jim C.]

Freestyle has full kits of the RA4 ( developer/ blix ) but I'd rather not have to ship cross country to NY from Freestyle,
B&H has the Kodak chemicals that I can pick up in store, this is what I have on my list -

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...plenisher.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...leach_Fix.html

Are these the correct chemicals to get ?

[Drew Wiley]

Yep. That's the right stuff. And I notice our local camera store here just started stocking it again, which will be convenient for me.

[Jim C.]

Drew, Thanks for the confirmation.

[RMiksell]

I understand not wanting to ship across country. I can't find any Ra4 around St Louis so I'm stuck with shipping. I wonder if you can dilute the Kodak chemistry and get similar results. diluting the chemistry appears to work better for tray processing.

[Drew Wiley]

Drums do conserve chemistry far better than trays. It takes very little volume by comparison, though can be a nuisance if your drum will only handle one test strip or print at a time. But you do have to be careful that there is enough volume to keep temp constant if the ambient air temp is much off, even if the drum rotates in a water bath. I'm skeptical of abnormal dilution, though you might be able to replenish solutions (a variable I personally prefer to avoid, though others have had success). The Arista and Kodak RA/RT kits perform identically. I can even interchange respective concentrates from the two brands.

[WayneStevenson]

"If you value your lungs at all, doing color chem in trays is just plain nuts."

The first time I C-41 processed 8x10 film a few years ago, I did just that. In a tiny bathroom. It didn't take me long to realize my error. I was laying on the floor in-between agitations with my face shoved into the bed sheet I used to block light from under the door, trying my damnedest to suck breaths of fresh air. Hah.