B&W-Monochrome from color negative film?

Is that Ilford manual available as a pdf. Just wanted to get good enough quality for some old family photos. I guess for wet prints from slides I could use the slide copier and a slow film.

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I have made several 8x10 prints on VC paper (Adorama house brand and Oriental) from 35mm Superia 400 and Kodak Gold 400 and 6x45 Porta 400. My biggest problems are focusing (the grain, even on Superia 400, is tiny and fairly low contrast, which makes grain focusing hard) and high print contrast (My best results were at Grade 3 1/2, but if I had captured the scenes in B&W film, I'd probably have printed at grade 2 for most the shots).
Here's an example from Superia 400 (the best prints I have were from Porta in 6x45, but I haven't scanned those). http://mattkrull.tumblr.com/post/113097180428

Marvin said:

Is that Ilford manual available as a pdf. Just wanted to get good enough quality for some old family photos. I guess for wet prints from slides I could use the slide copier and a slow film.

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I did a search, but came up empty. John W

MattKrull said:

I have made several 8x10 prints on VC paper (Adorama house brand and Oriental) from 35mm Superia 400 and Kodak Gold 400 and 6x45 Porta 400. My biggest problems are focusing (the grain, even on Superia 400, is tiny and fairly low contrast, which makes grain focusing hard) and high print contrast (My best results were at Grade 3 1/2, but if I had captured the scenes in B&W film, I'd probably have printed at grade 2 for most the shots).
Here's an example from Superia 400 (the best prints I have were from Porta in 6x45, but I haven't scanned those). http://mattkrull.tumblr.com/post/113097180428

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Matt, it's a little hard to tell on my monitor. Plus, if it's really snowing in the mountain shot that doesn't help with sharpness or contrast. I do have a few rolls of PortraVC and planned on shooting that and converting just to try it. John W

JW PHOTO said:

Matt, it's a little hard to tell on my monitor. Plus, if it's really snowing in the mountain shot that doesn't help with sharpness or contrast. I do have a few rolls of PortraVC and planned on shooting that and converting just to try it. John W

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Sorry John, it isn't the best photo. In retrospec, a poor choice for this thread. Maybe consider my posts as a "Your stuff will look *at least* this good"?
Yes it is snowing which greatly decreases the contrast in the mountain, and could be mistaken for grain. Any issues with sharpness are purely scanner user error / camera operator error. Consumer grade C41 film has, in my experience, a more subdued grain than b&w film of similar speed & price. It shows up as chroma noise in scans (I have some scan of Superia 1600 that are just terrible), but once you put it into B&W enlargements it turns into something different and more subtle (see link at bottom).
Again, my best prints are from Porta 400 VC shot in 645 printed on 8x10. There is virtually no grain in those prints, but I could never scale back the contrast as much as I wanted to for the shots I took. The hardest part was focusing though, I had to use a magnasite focus finder (much lower magnification than my my peak grain focuser, more like focusing through a view finder) because I had a hard time getting clear views of the grains.
Here's another link that might be useful. Unlike the other, which is largely a straight print, I tried to dodge&burn so you could see out the windows, but with limited success (again, let's blame the inexperienced darkroom printer rather than the materials - it's not the hammer's fault I can't swing it ). If you look at the wall between the table and the chair, and the tartan along the top, you can see the "grain". It's definitely there in this one (Kodak Gold 400). It is slightly exaggerated by my scanner (my scanner really exaggerates grain), but the not perfectly smooth tones is present in the print as well.http://mattkrull.tumblr.com/post/1129991399673
To put that "grain/tones" in context, the following was shot on the same film stock, using the same camera and lens (but scanned from the negative). That 'grain' patern is still visible in the solid colour areas. http://mattkrull.tumblr.com/post/42943247426
Enjoy shooting the Porta. It's great stuff. I hope you'll update this thread when you make some enlargements from it.

JW PHOTO said:

I know this is kind of a questionable question for this forum, but I thought it the best place to ask it. The trees in this area are starting to "sap-out" and the color change is on. I was wondering if anyone shoots a film like Kodak Portra and wet prints B&W from the negative? I know I want my cake and eat it too, but B&W doesn't turn me on much for Fall foliage like color does. This way would be much easier and I'd have a choice when shooting with a Rollei. Otherwise it's a bigger Hasselblad with two backs. If somebody does do this I need a paper suggestion since Panalure no longer is an option???? John W

I should also say that I'm using an older Ilford Ilfospeed 400 hs (35mm) and hl (medium format to 4x5) heads (VC) similar to the 500 head.

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hi jwphoto

your results will look like a print from a paper negative because it is a variety of orthochromatic family of emulsions
( silmilar results will happen if you use certain filters with b/w film
(there was a url link here which no longer exists) )

i used to print color slides and color negative film all the time ( sorry i don't have any scans of it was before i scanned anything )
it came out OK ... it takes a little getting used to the grey scale not being exactly the same if you are used to shooting bw panchromatic film.
personally, i like the orthochromatic / non panchromatic grey scale more than regular b/w film ... but i can understand why some don't ..

good luck !
john