Recently I took the plunge and got into RA-4 printing. I bought the 2-liter Arista RA-4 chem kit and a 100 pack of 8x10 Fuji CA Type II. I mixed the chemicals and tray processed the paper at room temperature.

My only question is: how do I combat the speed of the paper? Most of my prints were like 6 seconds at f/22. This is from a 6x9 negative with a 105mm lens. The enlarger is a Beseler 23C, and I am using a pack of Unicolor printing filters. The film was Kodak Ektar, and the filter pack was 25M 20Y.

Would it be worth buying some neutral density filters for the enlarger? I could add some neutral density by adding 5C 5M 5Y, would that work?



PS I did get adequate color correct prints but I wish I could work around f/5.6 or f/8, and I like 20 second exposures instead of 6.