Sean Esopenko

More Sigma DP2 work and almost printing RA4

July 11, 2011

I’ve been building up a series of little 5×7 prints from my recently acquired Sigma DP2.  They’re more or less “sketches” of work that I plan to take further with medium & large format film photography.  This little camera renders the nuances of fine lighting detail similar to my Schneider Super Angulon does so it does a great job at working out the “feeling” of an area before I bring out the big guns.

Colour printing in the darkroom is getting closer to “ready.”  I have been using a Jobo CPA-2 to process the paper and yesterday I finally had a proof print that wasn’t horrible.  Last weekend and Saturday I was having trouble with cyan hilights and brown/red shadows.  I was trying to determine if it was cross curves in the negative I was printing or contaminated developer.  Yesterday I settled on my losses and mixed up entirely fresh RA4 developer and ran a test print again.  I was pleased to see dark shadows that weren’t ugly brown like before so it was decided my developer wasn’t mixed up to par.  This stuff is extremely sensitive to variances in proportions between the ABC parts.  This time around I used a 10mL syringe and carefully measured out the portions for 1L of developer replenisher.

The CAP-40 is just about ready.  I have the replacement pulley and it’s center hole has been bored to fit the machine.  It’s installed and now I’m just waiting on getting the belt.  Once that’s done I have to order some bleach-fix and developer starter and then I’ll be using a roller transport machine.  I can’t wait!  While the jobo machine is better than trays the RA4 process is just too quick for the jobo.  It’s fine for film which has 3 minute development times but the 45 second development time of RA4 is just too much of a hassle to do in a drum.  Plus the developer has to be used one-shot which is a serious waste compared to replenishment.

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