RA-4 Printing in the darkroom from Kodak Vision 500T film 

Couple of things to consider here as well: the scene was very dimly lit, so the saturation is gonna take a hit on the negative because of that (interior scene with minimal artificial light and almost no sunlight since it was dawn); if you check my darkroom tour you can see a print made from Kodak vision as well, much more punchy in terms of saturation and contrast - it’s a daylight sunny scene; also this print was the last of my chemistry batch, so saturation and contrast can be affected. Will try to do the same one with fresh chemistry and check the difference. Overall Kodak vision is more muted, but you can get really cool colours from it, in the right setting and scene! Happy printing and thanks for watching!

I think you shouldn’t really judge the film by this particular image, it its from both an underexposed neg and maybe even a low contrast paper (i am assuming fuji ca type two or maybe supreme) if you try printing it with Fuji’s dpii or maybe even maxima the contrast and saturation would be much nicer!

Interesting video. One thing to note about paper: Fuji CAII is a lowish contrast paper with not so good blacks. If you can get your hands on Kodak endura or punchy Fuji paper the difference is considerable. Getting Kodak paper is not even possible right now. Here is my test 12 months ago www.dropbox.com/s/uq4iuhvpvsw049s/img009.jpg?dl=0 If vision T is low contrast for ra4 this would suite high contrast paper. I read yesterday that vision T is no good for ra4 but might work with right paper

@@pedronunes6401 These "CA type two" and "Maxima" are sold only in the US market. In Europe, the cheapest Fuji paper is called just Crystal Archive. This has problems with low Dmax, and overall saturation is not very good. The middle variant is somewhat better CA Supreme, and the best paper readily available is DP II. There ara also some "metallic" (DPPE)"and "extra matte" papers, but they are notoriously hard to get from any dealer. I´ve used DP II with good results, but not with ECN-2 film, which is almost impossible to print in a darkroom because of color crossovers. It is not fully compatible for RA-4 printing optically. You get pictures, but the colors will always be off.

Olá Ana, antes de mais obrigado pelo feedback! Os banhos RA-4, apesar de ser sempre recomendado uma temperatura entre os 35C e os 40C, esta temperatura só vai tornar a revelação mais rápida que a temperaturas mais baixas. Num outro vídeo eu explico que eu utilizo o mesmo processo do preto e branco para o processo RA-4, ou seja, a temperatura ambiente e com tinas. Os tempos de revelação a temperatura ambiente podem variar entre o 1:30m e os 3 minutos, dependendo do fabricante e do tipo de químicos RA-4. Nada que com 1 ou 2 testes não se consiga descobrir. Este tempo é normalmente o mesmo para o revelador e para o blix. Se quiseres posso sugerir te os químicos que uso e os tempos, para poupares esse trabalho e papel!

Unlike variable contrast B&W paper, RA-4 color paper does not have a filtered variable contrast control. In the hey-day of color printing, some makers offered hard and soft grades of paper contrast, and there was some contrast difference between paper brands. Today, kiss all of that goodbye. However, you can adjust color paper print contrast with a technique called "masking". This involves making a very weak or thin B&W film contact "print" of the color negative, which is then sandwiched with the negative when it is printed. The mask proportionately reduces the transmission density of the negative, reducing the overall contrast range of the negative. A bit technically involved, requiring some experimentation, and a lot of time, but it works very well. I learned color printing by printing color 35mm slides onto Cibachrome, which was a beautiful material but presented serious excess contrast problems. Masking was the solution, although you might invest 3 hours to make a good mask, then work out color filter settings, exposure times, and then make your first final print.

Thanks for the feedback. I tried my best to compensate for the huge amount of echo in the room. I’m still trying to figure out the best way to do it. I overlapped a couple effects in fcp to try to fix it, enveloper and audio denoises. Do you have an alternative?

In fact colour printing doesn’t require exact temperature, it develops at room temperature if you give it more time than usual. Nothing one or two experiments doesn’t tell you, for me it’s around 3 minutes, depending on the chemistry and paper. Filtration is a learning process, the more you do it, the better you can tell by just looking at the neg. Happy printing!

@@randomgrain The papers have changed. They used to give you rich, staurated colours. But , I see this is a problem now - and not just from watching your process, but from watching others who are doing it as well. I used to do Cibachrome in a hand rolled drum, but I never seemed to get the filtration quite right - even with the filter pack recommended on the envelope. But, some who were doing colour negatives often got beautiful results.

@@igaluitchannel6644 I’ve heard the same from other people as well, that are doing it for much longer than I am. I don’t really mind less saturation for the images I make, but I would like the option as well.

@@randomgrain I think they use a film labeled T-100 or something like that. Look at Aleksandr/Nordic Lab videos. This guy seems to have a proofer that tells him pretty fast which filtration to use. I wish I had had that when I was doing colour.

Nice info, thanks for that. I sometimes like the cast of vision films, even when printing. But I get what you say, sometimes the colours are off, and a pain to make it look decent. I will keep trying some things out and post the results.