On Sunday, I thought I’d spend a few hours relaxing in the darkroom, fine tuning my RA4 direct positive filtration pack.
Turned out not to be the case.
I had recently bought a pack of Agfa-Gevaert 12x12cm colour filters. So plenty big enough to cover the Dallmeyer 4B lens for when I do larger prints.
I just couldn’t get rid of those blues no matter what filters I added.
So I reverted back to my original Cibachrome filters, but still the blues??
I turned to the RA4 group on FB for advice, and Eddy Gogo, from Hong Kong, advised throwing a load more of Yellow and Magenta at it. Much more than I’ve used in the past.
And voila! Who’d have thought, I was being way too cautious. Ended up with 150Y and 120M just to get rid of the blues. Now I’m further back from where I started. It’s not even close to fine tuning with this filter pack.
There must be something simple I’m missing here, as previously I was quite happy with my results and just thought a tweak here and there would sort it.
Maybe it’s the Adox chems, but they have worked before. Maybe it’s the temperature but I’ve worked at room temp and heated, and it’s worked before.
Even with these new Agfa-Gevaert filters, which don’t seem to work as well as the Cibachrome ones, when I reverted back to Cibachrome, I needed more filtration than in the past.
I’m back in the darkroom tomorrow due to a rail strike, and I’m determined to get to the bottom of it. And I’d love to get these larger filters to work.
Hopefully a less frustrating day.