RA4 developer exhausted quickly

[Gary L. Quay]

I've never seen this before. Although, I haven't done much color printing at home yet. I mixed some Arista RA4 color chemistry, and put it in the bottles in my Jobo CPA to bring them up to 90 degrees. I let them sit for an hour in closed containers until they reached the right temp. My first test strip worked fine. My second one, a couple minutes later, came out faint and yellow. I tried a few more times, and had the same results. So, I switched to the second 1 liter bottle of developer, and the first two prints came out fine, but by the third, everything turned faint and yellow again. Am I doing something wrong? I should note that the box of chemistry sat on my shelf for 9 months before I used it. Both of my Epson printers died last week, and I decided to try my hand at color darkroom printing again.

On a related note, I've heard that room temp color tray processing is possible with chemistry designed for higher temps. Is this true, because the idea appeals to me.

Thanks for the help.

--Gary

[Gary Beasley]

Are you reusing the chems or doing it one shot?
Blix cross contamination can do this.

[tgtaylor]

What Gary said above.

Also, I'd recommend processing RA at the standard temperature of 95F.

[Gary L. Quay]

Thanks!
I was using it as a one-shot developer. I was also putting rinse water through the lift unit between prints. It was very odd.

I managed to get some good prints done by pouring the remaining developer and blix into trays and tray processing. I monitored temperature and adjusted time for each print. I'd really like to find a Nova Slot Processor and give the Jobo the heave-ho.

Gary

[SamReeves]

What Gary said above.

Also, I'd recommend processing RA at the standard temperature of 95F.

Agreed. It works best at that temp.