>>3338861>How much of a pain is it to get the tone of your pics right?It's a bit harder/more time consuming than working with a difficult B&W negative and trying to get exposure and contrast right. But nothing crazy.
There are 2 important differences with RA-4 compared to B&W:
1. You need to work in absolute darkness, which means you'll need a jobo drum or similar to load and develop each test print. So it takes more time until you get to see every test print.
2. Instead of contrast (like in B&W), you work with white balance. So you have 3 variables (cyan, yellow and magenta) instead of 1 (contrast grade). Since it's trial and error and every "try" takes more time than B&W, it's essential to have some tools to nail down wb as quickly as possible. You don't an expensive colour analyser, a viewing filter pack is very useful.
It has gels of red, green, blue, cyan, magenta, yellow in various densities, and you look at the test print through the filters, to see what filter makes the print look better.
Then, you note the filter's density, and add or subtract to your enlarger half that and of complimentary colour. If filter colour is warm, you subtract. If it's cold, you add.
For instance, if the filter is 20blue, you add 10 yellow. If the filter is 10red, you subtract 5 cyan. Etc.
(Btw, the tip is to look at midtones, cause the filters are not very accurate for extreme highlights and shadows. And also, just glance through the filters, for less than 2-3 seconds, caus eany longer and your brain starts compensating for the colour cast so you won't notice it.)
So overall, it's not terribly harder, but you should have the basic tools (a drum and a viewing filter kit), otherwise you will waste lots of time and paper.
