RA4 - how to get things right?

[Drew Wiley]

Michael - Kreonite is superb equipment. But Burkett did P3 Ciba, not RA4, which required a far more chemically-resistant machine with different timing. Ciba bleach is highly corrosive. But my drums do both equally well. I had my reason, he had his. Auto transport machines capable of bigger prints require a large volume of replenished chemistry.
That imposes some serious health as well as expense issues. I deliberately kept my print quantities well down for health reasons. Then just think about the utility bills. 80% of the cost and wattage goes to the dedicated dryer unit, and it is 240V. I have dual voltage in my lab, but certainly don't want to deal with the higher utility bills, the more complicated fume issues, or having to mix large volumes of chemistry.
All of those lab owner's I previously mention got sick. One had to have scar tissue removed from both his lungs. I could have taken over his lab. No thanks. Doing small quantities in drums is simply safer for personal purposes.
Once you go big there are also all kinds of hazmat and business license increased too. Yes, not being able to do large numbers lost me some pretty tempting sales; but so what? There are plenty of ways to make money; getting your health back is another story. With Ciba, even a big drum can just be dumped into a little bucket with some baking soda in the bottom, and the sulfuric acid bleach is instantly neutralized. With a big machine, it's a complicated headache and involves industrial zoning permits. That would be the case with every city around here; it's not like where Burkett lives. The entire Bay Area is tightly monitored. With RA4, I can actually run the drum outdoors and avoid most of the vapors. With a big machine, I'd have to have constant ventilation in a dedicated room. Etc ....

[Michael R]

Sorry yes you are right - as soon as a saw Kreonite I chimed in, forgetting this thread was about RA4 not Ciba.

My bad.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, I'm sad that Chris plans to throw in the towel once his supplies of Ciba run out or go bad. The Fuji Supergloss product is even better, but starts at the opposite end with either color neg film or an interneg. Maybe Chris is just at that point in life where he's thinking about retirement anyway. And frankly, converting to an equivalently high level of CN printing would probably involve at least fives years of relearning; and he's getting up there in years. I had a running start by doing both Ciba and RA4 parallel once I saw the handwriting was on the wall, and that Ciba was inevitably doomed. Commercial level RA4 printing is easy, but once one starts seriously fine tuning it with masking and so forth, all those masking protocols differ significantly from how it's done with Ciba.

[Michael R]

Indeed, it might simply seem too daunting for him to get into a much different workflow. He’s invested so much time and energy (not to mention cash) into his total mastery of Ciba. But who knows.

Incidentally apparently there are already images he will not print anymore in Ciba because of colour shifts.

[agregov]

"Dry to dry" has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Drew, no one doubts your knowledge in the forum, including myself. But why you would encourage a new c-printer that making color corrections on wet prints makes no sense to me. From Henry Hornstein's book on Color Photography: A Working Manual (pg169):

"Prints must be dry before they are evaluated because the density and color balance look quite different when prints are wet than when they are dry" ~ Henry Hornstein

Again, for the stage of experimentation this forum user is at with RA4 processing, your advice is fine. But discounting correct longer term advice if they choose to get deeper in color work will just end up confusing them and others that encounter this thread in the future. Or perhaps I just misunderstood what you were originally trying to suggest? Sorry if that's the case.

[Drew Wiley]

Michael - That was my concern when he made such large final purchases. Ciba develops crossover rather quickly. It simply won't store for long periods like RA4 chromogenic papers. I actually timed certain images based on the age of the paper. Highlight crossover went from greenish when the paper was new toward magenta as it got older. After about six months, overall shifts set in which rendered the Ciba paper relatively useless for high-quality applications. I actually used minor highlight crossover as an esthetic tool - not necessarily realistic, but subtle enough to look convincing. With my odds n ends of RA4 leftover paper, however, the shift even over several years is minor enough to be easily rebalanced on the color head, provided the paper is properly stored. But I'm not even printing RA4 right now or buying any new paper until this pandemic gets under control. I don't want any respiratory irritation at all.
So I'll have to be content with black and white printing for a few more months.

[Drew Wiley]

agregov - I always evaluate prints dry, every kind of print. But what I was stating is that it is really easy to quickly dry a print without fancy equipment. I once trained professional color matchers. I even have special very high color quality lamps at my retouching station, plus different kind of light sources available to replicate various display conditions. Even my colorheads are customized and more color accurate than the usual kind. I once earned income as a professional color consultant. And I have made quite a number of big prints. But there is nothing fancier than a variable-temp heat gun and a bunch of big fiberglass screens in my facility in terms of drying equipment. I actually threw out my drying cabinet because I never needed to use it. If somebody wants a special dryer, they can certainly buy or design one. But it has nothing to do with the quality of final output color. In fact, for really fussy work, I like to re-evaluate the print the next day before my eyes are fatigued (computer screen work is the worst for tiring out the eyes).

[pkr1979]

I tried filling and emptying the paper drums today just to see how long that took. I tried with both a 3063 expert drum and a 2830 drum. The kind of drum didnt seem to matter much (considering the entrance is the same for both drums it makes sense). For 500ml it takes pretty close to 10 seconds to fill it... and at least 10 seconds to empty it. The minimum amount of chemistry for the 2830 drum is 100ml and for the 3063 its 300... but going down to 250 would be closer to 5 seconds then 10 it wasnt that much quicker with 100ml (when filling). Also, if I filled to quick it would just come out the emptying hose. However, the lesser amount of fluid made a difference when emptying.

But when using the 3063 drum which requires 300ml you are pretty close to 20 seconds filling and draining combined.

This leads me to another question though... If I make test prints with 8x10" and find the proper exposure to be 4 seconds... is there a way to calculate the exposure for a 16x20"?

[Duolab123]

Go to Ebay and buy an old Kodak Color Darkroom Dataguide, it's got formulas for adjusting times based on several factors, filters etc.

[Drew Wiley]

You want to make your test exposure at the same magnification, with all the same setting of time and color balance, but just onto a smaller piece of paper. You could select just a representation portion of the 16X20 image to develop in the 8x10 drum. 16X20 will give you four 8X10 sheets per piece, which would make convenient test strips, for example.

Somebody might chime in (and just did) with a formula for computing the time change automatically when you scale up; or certain colorheads might have software to do that automatically; but here you're dealing with unrealistically short times starting out, so those kinds of formulas are unlikely to be reliable due to both reciprocity and the bulb color change factor warming up and cooling down, affecting about 2 sec or a whoppping 50% of your short exposure time! An electronic shutter could be fitted onto your enlarging lens to trim off that part of the cycle. But if you merely slow down the exposure to around 8 sec instead of 4 you'd alleviate the issue.

Isn't there any kind of neutral density scrim option built into your colorhead to slow the exposure down? If not, you could add your own. But don't confuse that with my primary advice regarding 16X20 prints themselves - get accustomed to simply making the equivalent of test strips from select portions of the full-sized magnification onto 16x20. That way there will be less rude surprises.