Printing and Developing Color
Justin F. Knotzke
I have a pretty decent colour enlarger. I've been printing and developing
B&W for about a year. Far from being great at it, I've got a "handle" shall we
say.
Lately I have been thinking about maybe trying colour. From what I have
read and googled, developing colour is tricky and expensive and many say I am
better off doing it at the lab.
Does anyone print colour? What about having the negs done at a lab and the
prints done at home? How tricky/expensive is colour printing compared to B&W?
Thanks
J
--
Justin F. Knotzke
jkno...@shampoo.ca
http://www.shampoo.ca PGP: http://www.shampoo.ca/pubkey.txt
Nick Zentena
>
> I have a pretty decent colour enlarger. I've been printing and developing
> B&W for about a year. Far from being great at it, I've got a "handle" shall we
> say.
>
> Lately I have been thinking about maybe trying colour. From what I have
> read and googled, developing colour is tricky and expensive and many say I am
> better off doing it at the lab.
>
> Does anyone print colour? What about having the negs done at a lab and the
> prints done at home? How tricky/expensive is colour printing compared to B&W?
Colour paper is about the same price RC B&W paper. Give or take a
couple of pennies a sheet. Kodak Pro 8x10 paper is I think around $38 for
100 sheets. Sounds about right. Chemicals depend on your choice of
chemicals. I buy the RA-4 kit from Fotochem. Including shipping I'm guessing
an 8x10 costs less then 20 cents for chemicals. If you buy the 6.5 litre
kit. Smaller kits cost more per sheet. Bigger ones less. Room temperture
kits are more. Those prices are C$.
How hard? You've got a few issues. You need good temp control. My temp
control is a picnic cooler with a fish heater in the bottom. It works well.
Total cost [new cooler and new heater] was around $60. Colour filtration
isn't that hard if you stick to a relatively small number of films. You'll
find in normal lighting that the filtration will be about the same for
everything. The process is basically 100% in the dark. I use drums on a
rollerbase. Drums aren't that expensive. Use very little chemicals. They
also hold temps pretty well. Other issues are colour chemicals don't last
forever. Once mixed the working life can be short. I've been very pleased
with the life of the fotochem kits.
Personally I think good B&W printing is harder then good colour printing.
I can usually get a print better then the average lab print very quickly
with colour. With B&W I'm much more likely to want to try every possible
variation. With colour green grass should be green. With B&W maybe I want
the sky natural maybe I wanted it darker. If that makes any sense.
With colour you can buy all the toys in the world if you want to spend
the money. Everything from a anaylzer that will get the filters right. Set
the exposure timer. The newer ones even program themselves. You could added
a dry to dry processor. Put a dry exposed sheet in one end pull out a dry
print from the other. All the toys cost money and some need volume to justify.
You can also do things to save money. Mix your own RA-4 chemicals. Buy
roll paper.
If you have a colour enlarger buy a small kit of chemicals and a box
of 5x7 paper. By the end of it you should know if it's for you.
I'm still waiting on a scale so I can mix up some C-41 chemicals. I don't
expect any serious problems.
One more thing go to the Kodak website and grab the manuals for C-41
and RA-4. They'll give you a feel of what's involved.
Nick
Mike
> I have a pretty decent colour enlarger. I've been printing and
> developing
> B&W for about a year. Far from being great at it, I've got a "handle"
> shall we say.
>
> Lately I have been thinking about maybe trying colour. From what I have
> read and googled, developing colour is tricky and expensive and many say I
> am better off doing it at the lab.
>
> Does anyone print colour? What about having the negs done at a lab and
> the
> prints done at home? How tricky/expensive is colour printing compared to
> B&W?
>
It is easy and you don't need to buy much to make color prints. Get your
negatives processed at Walgreens (or elsewhere), and forget about
temperature control. You don't need it.
All you need is the Tetenal Mono RA-4 kit. No temperature control needed,
the chemicals last a long time (very slow to oxidize), minimal fumes, and
easy to use. The downside is that a $30 kit is good for only 100 8x10s.
Then just find a Kodak Color Printing Kit on eBay. I got mine for $6. You
are set for tray processing. However I don't like working in complete
darkness so I also bought a motor base and a couple 8x10 processing drums
(less than $30).
Color filtration was surprisingly a piece of cake for me. I got a perfect
8x10 on my 2nd print. The same filtration settings seemed to mostly work
across numerous film types ranging from Fuji to Kodak.
Temperature control allows you to use cheaper RA-4 chemicals. I can't
comment on the quality differences, but my 8x10s are stunning.
Now that I talked it up, I will say that B&W is more enjoyable because there
is more control and creativity. With RA-4, the only nobs you have are
filtration and exposure. I haven't dodged and burned anything. However in
some ways, RA-4 is actually easier than B&W...
--Mike
Justin F. Knotzke
> One more thing go to the Kodak website and grab the manuals for C-41
> and RA-4. They'll give you a feel of what's involved.
Once again Nick, thanks so much for the info. It doesn't seem as bad as I
orginally thought. I might actually take a stab at it.
Thanks again,
Joseph Meehan
> I have a pretty decent colour enlarger. I've been printing and
> developing B&W for about a year. Far from being great at it, I've got
> a "handle" shall we say.
>
> Lately I have been thinking about maybe trying colour. From what I
> have read and googled, developing colour is tricky and expensive and
> many say I am better off doing it at the lab.
>
> Does anyone print colour? What about having the negs done at a lab
> and the prints done at home? How tricky/expensive is colour printing
> compared to B&W?
>
> Thanks
>
> J
It's not all that bad. Nick Z I think did a good job of explaining it.
--
Joseph E. Meehan
26 + 6 = 1 It's Irish Math
Mike
> It's not all that bad. Nick Z I think did a good job of explaining
> it.
>
except you don't need temperature control with the room temperature RA-4
chemicals ;)
Nick Zentena
>
>> One more thing go to the Kodak website and grab the manuals for C-41
>> and RA-4. They'll give you a feel of what's involved.
>
> Once again Nick, thanks so much for the info. It doesn't seem as bad as I
> orginally thought. I might actually take a stab at it.
>
You'll likely want some normal household stuff in addition to the stuff
sold by photo shops. A small hair dryer to dry test prints. A digital
kitchen thermometer to keep an eye on your water bath. Things like kids
medcine droppers for measuring small amounts. It's funny how you start
looking at everything wondering what use it can be put to-)
Nick
David Starr
wrote:
>
> I have a pretty decent colour enlarger. I've been printing and developing
>B&W for about a year. Far from being great at it, I've got a "handle" shall we
>say.
>
> Lately I have been thinking about maybe trying colour. From what I have
>read and googled, developing colour is tricky and expensive and many say I am
>better off doing it at the lab.
>
> Does anyone print colour? What about having the negs done at a lab and the
>prints done at home? How tricky/expensive is colour printing compared to B&W?
Color printing is a lot easier than you may think. I use Tetenal's
RA-4 MONO room temperature chemicals and get very consistent color
balance between rolls. At least at first, stick to one film "family".
I use Portra films, but I'm sure Fuji has a similar "family". This
will give you the color balance consistency. What surprised me was
the lack of color correction needed for different lighting situations;
flash, sunny outdoors & cloudy outdoors printed fine with pracitcally
no filtration changes.
One tip - get a set of color print viewing filters. It really makes
getting the correct color balance easy.
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