Originally Posted by
Drew Wiley
Chromogenic RA4 printing directly from color negatives is actually one of the easiest and most straightforward forms of printing there is in terms of the mechanics of it. And it can be more affordable than either fiber-based black and white printing or other avenues of color printing. Inkjet certainly isn't cheap when you consider what goes into it in terms of time, materials, and periodic replacement of equipment and software. On the other hand, a well-built enlarger could easily last a hundred years. The relevant RA4 papers don't seem to be in any danger of disappearing anytime soon - nearly all the same papers that work for the big commercial laser printers work with ordinary darkroom colorheads too, although certain papers in certain markets might be temporarily hard to get due to pandemic backlog issues.
All that being said, chromogenic printing is just like any other printmaking skill in that one just keeps learning and improving. You have to shoot, print... shoot, print....many times over and over again, to really understand how a given film and paper respond to your vision, or else how to bend your own expectations to the native characteristics of the media itself. Having a certain amount of restriction with respect to the characteristic signature of particular film and paper combination is actually the key to moving ahead efficiently. The temptation with digital, on the other hand, is that just because so many things are hypothetically possible, so many different directions, that nothing really gets mastered, at least not by very many practitioners. Less is more.
In the meantime, competent services which will do the C41 processing of your film can supply relatively affordable scans by which to view your negatives, just to see if you're on the right track until you become comfortable with that particular film. No need for expensive drum scans or other top end scans, since this is only for sake of general valuation and not actual printing. But if substituting smaller format film just for sake of saving money during the learning curve, use at least 120 format. The smaller sampling size of 35mm frames is often misleading with mid to lower quality scans.
If you go with Ektar, carry at least a 1B light pinkish skylight filter for minor color cast corrections, plus a KR1.5 or alternately 81A for sake of overall bluish overcast days. Meter this film with as much care as you would a color chrome, and you won't have any problems. The filter factors for each of the above two filters will be negligible. Portra 160 is balanced a little warmer, so you might not need any supplementary filtration at all unless the lighting is way off; but experiment to suit your own taste. Porta 400 is somewhere in between, but closer in hue characteristics to Porta 160 than Ektar.
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