Hi my name is Hans and I am happy to participate and receive advice and help in this group. I am looking to try to use color. I see that the prices are very expensive and difficult to find. How do you get used color film sheets or do you know if it is possible to do this with color photographic paper? Thanks for your help!
Hi... welcome to the forum. Yes, large format color negative film is expensive. Processing is expensive too but the results are really impressive. Personally, I would not buy or use second-hand film (assuming that is what you meant by "used") for anything serious. If you fill out your profile and include a location it is possible that someone here might be able to help you out better.Originally Posted by jeantique
Fuji has an excellent selection of color printing paper based on standard RA4 chemistry, but only one type of it is available in boxed already cut sheets; the rest is in rolls. If you have an enlarger with a colorhead, a means of relatively accurate temperature control for chemicals, and a simple drum processor, it's not difficult to learn this kind of color printing.
When it comes to sheet film itself, it's Kodak you turn to. And while they do again offer a positive or "chrome" film, including in sheet sizes, to print color directly by enlarging in the darkroom like I described above, you need to work with color negative film instead, which needs standard C41 processing. Among the excellent color neg films which Kodak offers in 4X5
are Portra 160 (low contrast), Portra 400 (faster speed, and a little higher contrast), and Ektar 100 (the most color contrast, color saturation, and finest grain ). And yes, sheet film prices are high these days, and will probably never go down. So you might want to experiment first with more economical 120 roll film until you are comfortable with what you are doing.
You don't state where you live, so it's hard to direct you to specific suppliers of film, film development, and printing paper.
Hello and thank you very much to each of you for your response. Thank you for taking the time to write.
Thank you very much for your answer and yes I was just wondering how it would be possible to do the same as with the black and white paper? At the moment I put the paper in the chamber and expose it to iso 3. Then I put it in a developing tank like for a print. The only problem is the contrast which is very different than on a film. I live in France by the way.
Thank you very much for your answer and yes I was just wondering how it would be possible to do the same as with the black and white paper? At the moment I put the paper in the chamber and expose it to iso 3. Then I put it in a developing tank like for a print. The only problem is the contrast which is very different than on a film. I live in France by the way.
I found this paper: https://www.fotoimpex.com/photopaper...-normal-3.html
Try Nordfoto.de if you want cut-sheet. Try the DPII, it's miles better than the plain Crystal Archive that Impex are selling. It's a little more expensive, but still cheap.
Forget about getting comparable quality from an RA4 reversal process as you'd get from proper negative film. Yes, you can get a color image, but it'll be 'artistic' and high in contrast. Under favorable conditions, the results may almost look natural. Be prepared to do LOTS of experimentation to get to that point. It's an interesting endeavor, but I wouldn't recommend it if you expect the same kind of experience as shooting regular color film.
Color sheet film is expensive. Sorry, there's no way around that. Sometimes there are 'second hand' lots for sale on forums like this one, eBay etc. Quality will vary. Expired film is a mixed bag; some of it is OK, a lot of it is poor when compared to fresh film. How bad that is for your purposes, is up to you to decide. Even expired color sheet film is usually fairly costly these days as there's a lot of demand for it.
With large format color, you can choose: you can EITHER go for accurate color rendition, OR you can go for cheap. The combination doesn't exist. If you want good color rendition at an affordable price, shoot digital.
I think the OP is seeking information on using RA4 paper as a paper-negative. With black-and-white materials (and 'some' experimentation) the paper-neg can be contact-printed on to another piece of the same material with some sort of usable result.
With RA4 colour materials this cannot be done directly with any degree of success (or has someone, anyone, anywhere, got pictorial results???). The masking in a C41 colour film is only one of the details missing from the process. Some people have managed to use a direct exposure on a piece of RA4 paper with chemical reversal, to get a positive final result. The quality of the result varies considerably and one shouldn't expect to replace Portra with a paper-neg any time soon, but apparently it does 'sort of' work, though in a different workflow to the black-and-white neg / pos idea.
Best bet as a first step would probably be to try 120 colour-rollfim, exposed in a camera and developed in C41 as usual, and make some prints on RA4 to get a feel of the process. The size of 120 negs can be very successful for enlarged colour-prints and results can guide any further increase in neg-size, up to sheet film. Good luck !
Your link to fotoimpex shows that it is just private-labeled Fuji paper, so yes, it could potentially work. Some Fuji products are labeled a little differently in the EU than here in the US. But all are based on standard RA4 chemistry, which should be available from the same sources. The cut sheet version of Fuji Crystal Archive paper here, sold as CAii in three different sheens, is a decent middle of the road products plenty good enough for the learning curve. But if you want something in bigger sizes, or with more contrast and saturation "punch" even in small sizes, you need to look at Fuji's selection of paper rolls, and cut them down to individual print size yourself in the dark.
Don't listen to any nonsense that high-quality color results can't be achieved in a darkroom. The very highest can in fact be; but the same could be said about music. Just owning even a Stradivarius violin doesn't make one a great musician. Everything has its own learning curve necessary to master for the best results, and that applies to both darkroom and digital printing. But RA4 printing in the darkroom is relatively economical in terms of materials (film and paper); cheaper, in fact, than printing on high-quality fiber-based black and white papers. Only if you need huge wide rolls of top-end color paper does it get expensive per short-term cost.
Keep in mind we're talking about printing directly from color NEGATIVES onto matching RA4 paper, designed for that kind of use. Printing positive chrome or slide film instead, onto these RA4 papers, is a different topic completely; and just like Koraks just hinted, requires a LOT of experience, and involves either making suitable internegatives from the chrome original first (which I sometimes do, with considerable success, having the right kind of specialized gear for that), or else you have to experiment with "reversal" processing, which nobody so far has seemed to master with these present materials. That leaves only the third route, having your chromes commercially scanned and outputted onto RA4 paper by expensive dedicated laser printing devices.
So if you like darkroom work, and are interested in color printing, shoot color negative film instead of chromes.
But before you start down that path, please understand that color chemistry is more noxious than black and white chemistry. So I don't recommend doing it in trays or open tanks unless you have very efficient ventilation drawing any fumes away from yourself. Simple rotating drums are safer in that respect, because far less chemistry volume is needed at a time.
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