Anyone Into Routinely Making B&W Prints From Their Color Negatives?

[DF]

I'm getting a big kick out of how well my B&W prints are coming out from color neg's. Many are fully polarized, which would initially ruin these particular shots had they originated in B&W.
It'll be interesting to see how the Ektars replicate into B&W.

 

[gone]

Are you printing them in a darkroom? I never tried that, and I'm not sure what "fully polarized" means. Do you mean unwanted reflections? It seems a polarizing filter on the lens should fix that, as well as darken the skies a little. I found several threads here on making B&W wet prints from color negatives. It seems that not only is it possible, but others have also been able to make good wet prints this way. I'd try it myself, but don't have any color negatives anymore, just B&W.

 

[runswithsizzers]

If you are saying the use of polarizing filters is good for color negatives, but bad for b&w negatives (?) - then I would like to hear more about that theory.

 

[citychicago]

If using mulitgrade paper and filters, a good rule of thumb is to double your starting filter. If you usually start with a #2, start with a #4 to print a color negative. There's a lot of orange film base to be compensated.

 

[DF]

Are you printing them in a darkroom? I never tried that, and I'm not sure what "fully polarized" means. Do you mean unwanted reflections? It seems a polarizing filter on the lens should fix that, as well as darken the skies a little. I found several threads here on making B&W wet prints from color negatives. It seems that not only is it possible, but others have also been able to make good wet prints this way. I'd try it myself, but don't have any color negatives anymore, just B&W.

Yes, I'm in a darkroom doing B&W printing. The color neg's are from films processed elsewhere - I've never processed nor printed color film. "fully polarized" meaning the color shots were shot at or near 90 degrees W/polarizer to get the maximum benefits.
Yah, I know, all sounds confusing.

 

[DF]

If you are saying the use of polarizing filters is good for color negatives, but bad for b&w negatives (?) - then I would like to hear more about that theory.

Polarizers, I find, are great for skies in B&W photography - but everything beneath, whether it city/landscapes, streets, people, etc. becomes overly contrasty/too dark & flat.
Not the same with color -entire scene benefits, and, that entire scene looks swell also in B&W.

 

[abruzzi]

I've never tried this, but I had a few throughts--

B&W paper is not red sensitive (i.e. orthochromatic), but since you're not projecting positive color, instead of getting the traditional ortho response I assume you are getting the reverse where cyan positive creates red negative and therefore shows up dark on the print?

If you are using multigrade paper then I'd guess some colors in the negative will impact the contrast differently in different areas of the image--blue in the original which should equate to yellow in the negative and should reduce contrast, and green in the original should be magenta in the negative and should increase contrast.

I don't know how much of an effect this would be--dark cyans, high contrast greens and low contrast blues?

 

[DREW WILEY]

I'm certainly not nuts enough to routinely do it. I have successfully done it, via the double negative route : color neg to interpositive on pan film; interpositive to printing interneg on either pan or ortho film. Expect frustration going straight from a color neg directly to printing paper. That orange film mask is just like and orange safelight; and your contrast level in the print is likely to be awfully low and bland, even starting from Ektar. And what on earth do polarizers have to do with any of this?

 

[AZD]

Regularly, no. But here and there. Seems like it always required a high filter grade. Sometimes it worked great, other times not so much. Kodak used to offer an RGB sensitive black and white darkroom paper for this purpose. Always wanted to try it but my 1990’s dollars didn’t stretch that far.

 

[Roger Cole]

I have some 8x10 of the paper referred to above, Panalure II frozen, though I'm not sure if it's still good regardless of being frozen. Unlike the original Panalure, the II seemed to work just fine. But since there are no more panchromatic black and white papers I'm aware of it's problematic at best. VC papers are green as well as blue sensitive, so that's good, but contrast will vary with the color, and when I've tried it the prints come out looking VERY grainy, probably from the fact that anything redder than green - from somewhere in yellow on to the red end of the spectrum - just doesn't print at all. Well reversed colors in that range, of course, but still, I found the results totally unacceptable, while on Panalure II they looked fine, assuming the one contrast suited the image.

If I had to do this now or just had a color neg image I really wanted to print in black and white I'd do it in hybrid mode. I think given the papers available today you'll just get vastly better results, or at least vastly more consistent good results.

 

[Roger Cole]

I'm certainly not nuts enough to routinely do it. I have successfully done it, via the double negative route : color neg to interpositive on pan film; interpositive to printing interneg on either pan or ortho film. Expect frustration going straight from a color neg directly to printing paper. That orange film mask is just like and orange safelight; and your contrast level in the print is likely to be awfully low and bland, even starting from Ektar. And what on earth do polarizers have to do with any of this?

Well yes - of course that will work, but if you do all that you either REALLY want that image or are more dedicated to doing everything "analog" than even I am. Leave it to Drew to have used the absolute most labor intensive but probably also the absolutely best-results-producing method!

You could scan and print a black and white internegative on ink jet transparency, I suppose, if you really wanted to print the final print on regular darkroom black and white paper. I've no idea how workable that is. I know people have done it but I haven't, or even read much about it.

 

[DREW WILEY]

In the past few years I have made quite a few black and white prints from older sheet film color chromes. That's not so difficult. But from color negs - I gotta have some special reason to mess with those, although sheer curiosity is an undeniable component. I kept notes. But the result? - no inkjet print is gonna duplicate that, especially the sheer depth and subtle toning qualities possible with premium silver papers. And the ole Panalure route is rather blaaah by comparison.

High-end film conversions are done with image-setters, not so common nowadays, but still available a few places. Enlarged negs via inkjet is more an alt topic of Pt/Pd, carbon printing etc. Per fuss and cost, I don't see that as any improvement over the all-darkroom double neg method; but it might be a more familiar route to many these days. Check the hybrid section of the forum.

 

[npl]

I tried it once, and even at grade 5 the contrast was way too low, so I gave up. Is it normal ?

There is a possibility that my ilford filter was too old, it was in an old box someone gave me for free. Didn't tried with full magenta on my color head, should have.

 

[Paul Howell]

The issue with color negatives is the orange mask, then the response of standard black and white paper. I used panalue on occasion, did not like results that much, doable but not worth the effort. Even making an internegative from standard color negative is difficult due again the orange mask. If you are using a movie film without the mask, that might be more doable. When I was with UPI in the 70s they wanted a full color spread for the Sunday travel section, I was in Morocco at the time. Had the negatives developed a the field office, once they got to the U.S they decided on black and white for the wire, looked like crap.

 

[DREW WILEY]

You have to null out the orange mask in relation to the exact spectral sensitivity of the specific pan film you are using for the interpositive. Won't go into the details here. Certainly doable, though most will wisely turn back before encountering the lion's teeth and claws. I was already exceptionally well equipped for that kind of task. An interpositive itself needs to be slightly overexposed and of only moderate contrast. But after that, you need to make the final interneg with a type of film capable of considerable contrast expansion. I was working in 8x10, and a second sheet of TMX 100 would have been best, but I had a bunch of old 8x10 Ortho Litho laying around, plus a lot of old 8x10 Tech Pan, so said, What the hell, and went with the Ortho Litho - probably the worst option of the three; but was cheap and developed relatively cleanly in HC-110, and I ended up with a stunning print on MGWT.

A pan sensitive paper would have been a waste of time, at least for a print worthy of drymounting and cherishing. I can understand certain past commercial uses for it.

 

[Brendan Quirk]

I had excellent results from Panalure Select RC in the 80s. It came in three contrast grades, and gave excellent results.

I have made prints from color negatives on regular paper, and, as others noted, the results were grainy. Since the negative has three different dye clouds, and the paper is not panchromatic, not all dye clouds register equally.

I have a project in mind, using old negatives, that could use the the grainy results. To that end, I did a calibration for my Analyzer Pro (RH Designs) with a piece of clear orange film in the enlarger. As expected, speed was about half of normal for B/W (using Ilford MG Classic fiber). Surprisingly, though, the contrast ranges were similar, just a little less. I still don't expect typical prints, though...

 

[DREW WILEY]

The best offset to an orange mask is to simply take a snippet of that same color neg film itself minus any image (like a developed by not exposed frame, or a piece of sheet film. Or in a more generic sense, a color conversion filter like an 85 amber-orange could be used below the enlarger lens. But that still leaves several fine-tuning issues. One involves the color temp difference between a typical enlarger light source and what your choice of pan film is balanced for (which can be solved on a colorhead using a color temp meter).
The other issue is the depressed sensitivity of pan film to green, which can be balanced out with light yellow-green filter like a Hoya Xo or Wratten 11. I'm speaking about optimal results technically, not just having fun with all this, and seeing what comes up on the fishing line.

I haven't had any excessive dye cloud "graininess". But that's probably because I almost never work smaller than a 6X7 neg, and in super-fine grained Ektar, and more often in large format, with a priority on 8x10 shots. Yet the double neg method probably reduces the risk of it anyway, versus going directly to pan printing paper. No time at the moment to explain why that is the case, but it is.

 

[redbandit]

ultrafine sells a panchromatic paper as "pinhole camera film".

Its supposed to be genuine panchromatic paper, and thus should be ideal for this, but i think they only sell it as 4x6 or 5x7.

 

[redbandit]

Yes, I'm in a darkroom doing B&W printing. The color neg's are from films processed elsewhere - I've never processed nor printed color film. "fully polarized" meaning the color shots were shot at or near 90 degrees W/polarizer to get the maximum benefits.
Yah, I know, all sounds confusing.

polarizing filters are not going to harm black and white film, nor change how it works with an enlarger.

 

[Agulliver]

I did this back in the 1980s when large colour enlargements were expensive and I wanted a couple of 30" prints from negatives I'd shot at a BMX competition. I was printing using B&W enlarger and paper from C41 negatives. As I recall getting desired contrast was tricky but not impossible. But not something I want to do regularly.

 

[Brendan Quirk]

Here is a comparison of the same negative (probably Kodacolor VR100) printed on:

1. Panalure single weight fiber (before graded Panalure Select)
2. More recent print on Ilford Multigrade IV Fiber (filter grade unrecorded)

The difference is obvious. Might this shed some (enlarging) light on the subject?