B&W Prints from Color Slides...

There are a few ways to go about this, but I don't have the equipment to make B&W internegatives with a camera. Yes, no bellows unit for any of my camera systems.
Printing the sides to a 4x5 sheet of film has its challenges, such as requiring a quick exposure and the requirement for test exposures ($$).

I happen to have an old Rolleiflex 6008i with fried aperture closing circuitry. Otherwise it works fine. I took the lens off and it, indeed, measures light in 'stop down' mode. Calculating the exact shutter speed required for whatever light will fall on the film plane.

So, the idea is to place the 6008i with no lens on the enlarger baseboard and focus the slide onto the reflex focus screen. Take a meter reading (or even use 'Auto') and expose the internegative that way.

Seems almost too easy and I don't have to buy any extra equipment or lenses.

I can't say I have ever used the 'bracket' exposure setting on the Rollei (I don't expose much slide film these days) but this might be an opportunity to actually use that function to ensure I get a perfectly exposed B&W internegative.

There's a series of videos by Tim Hall on YouTube devoted to this very topic. I hope you find them useful.

Yes, contact printing is an option, but a little fiddly with 35mm. He has some great videos!

I’m inclined to enlarge my 35mm to medium format and reduce the 4x5 transparencies to medium format also, both using the same technique.

It's comparatively tricky to get good repro of 35mm slides onto MF. You need the original dead flat (not in a slide mount), and a seriously appropriate lens for that modest scale of enlargement, like a Rodagon D (duplicating lens). It's much easier to do it on 4x5 sheet film.

I printed an 8X10 FP4 black and white interneg onto 16X20 paper yesterday, enlarged from an old Ektachrome 64 4X5 original. Understanding masking is a huge advantage; and that works best with stable PET based sheet film. Otherwise, I treated the chrome scene much like a natural scene, and used an orange filter over the enlarging lens for sake of strong contrast differentiation between clouds and sky etc when making the interneg.

I'm trying to listen to Tim Hall without falling asleep. But I distinctly prefer my own methodology anyway.

What's important with Kodachrome, is that if you want to introduce a red filter into the workflow, it should be a 25, and not a 29, which would be the ordinary choice for Ektachrome. Can't go into the full explanation why at the moment. But they dyes are quite different.

ic-racer said:

Yes, contact printing is an option, but a little fiddly with 35mm. He has some great videos!

I’m inclined to enlarge my 35mm to medium format and reduce the 4x5 transparencies to medium format also, both using the same technique.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I missed the 35mm detail. There used to be an entire industry making B&W prints from slides. I wonder if all of that technology and knowledge is lost forever. Good luck!

Most of that commercial dupe workflow was necessarily quickie and semi-automated, and not really ideal for the kind of purposes many or us would seek in terms of optimal resultant print quality, as its endpoint. Even 4X5 to 4X5 dupes and internegs tended to be mediocre at best, unless one could afford dramatically higher pricing for sake of high quality prepress or dye transfer work. Industrial scanners and laser image setters changed everything.

I use graphic-grade Apo Nikkor process lenses for my own sheet film repro applications : internegs, interpositives, color separations. For smaller film, Apo Rogagon N's do fine if a reasonable amount of enlargement is in mind, like 35mm or 6X7 onto 4X5 or larger. For less magnification than that, a Rodagon D might be preferable.

DREW WILEY said:

It's comparatively tricky to get good repro of 35mm slides onto MF. You need the original dead flat (not in a slide mount), and a seriously appropriate lens for that modest scale of enlargement, like a Rodagon D (duplicating lens). It's much easier to do it on 4x5 sheet film.

Click to expand...

Yes the film will be in a glass carrier in the enlarger with a Componon-S enlarging lens projecting downward onto 120 film. The camera body will be used to keep the medium format film flat and light tight.

The baseboard is adjustable (red circles) to align the camera to the enlarger head.

Thanks aparat. Just a pity that in this first part he only shows you his examples and ends on a potted history of photography. So in 30 mins I was none the wiser as to how he makes b&w prints from transparencies nor what equipment and level of skills the student might need

He clearly knows a lot but his instructional/presentation skills might benefit from advice from those who know a lot more on how to instruct on a video

To those who know his content on this subject how many parts are there and what skills and equipment does he require you to have?

Thanks

pentaxuser

pentaxuser said:

Thanks aparat. Just a pity that in this first part he only shows you his examples and ends on a potted history of photography. So in 30 mins I was none the wiser as to how he makes b&w prints from transparencies nor what equipment and level of skills the student might need

He clearly knows a lot but his instructional/presentation skills might benefit from advice from those who know a lot more on how to instruct on a video

To those who know his content on this subject how many parts are there and what skills and equipment does he require you to have?

Thanks

pentaxuser

Click to expand...

This is a short series of a couple of episodes, but the topic of making B&W prints from transparencies is a common theme throughout his channel. It is primarily for advanced photographers, such as @ic-racer , which is why I mentioned it here. Tim Hall talks about a lot of advanced techniques, such as developing his own step tablets on transparency and negative film, printing by numbers, film masking, color printing theory, etc.

His presentation methods are not very slick, but his content is full of very useful information. His approach is a bit idiosyncratic, combining solid theory with the practice of running a commercial color photo lab in San Francisco, but if one can get past his presentation style, one can learn a lot from him. I know I did.

Was there even a follow-up to that specific video, demonstrating his process itself? I couldn't find any using the search engine.

A lot of my own equipment is quite specialized and custom-made.

DREW WILEY said:

Was there even a follow-up to that specific video, demonstrating his process itself? I couldn't find any using the search engine.

A lot of my own equipment is quite specialized and custom-made.

Click to expand...

Apart from his series on B&W paper, his approach is more of a case study type. He talks a lot about individual photographs and interjects bits and pieces about his process. But he does take time to explain things. I assume that you already own the necessary equipment for pin registration, color densitometer, etc., so you would benefit from at least some of his insight. Again, the approach is idiosyncratic, but one can find a lot of useful information there. To be honest, a lot of the things he talks about require too much in the way of specialized equipment, darkroom space, and sheer effort for me to even attempt the kinds of printing and finishing he does, but I enjoy seeing him work.

If you don't actually want/need an internegative, it's also very reasonable to just process the print by reversal. You'll get slightly wonky contrast, as you'd get if using photo paper in camera (the emulsion varies contrast by the ratio of blue to green light, and pretty much ignores red), but the end result with have a pretty good resemblance to a print from ortho film.

You'll need your regular print developer, some sort of bleach system that removes developed silver but not undeveloped halide (potassium permanganate or potassium dichromate in sulfuric acid solution, followed by a sodium sulfite clearing bath, or copper sulfate in an acid solution with table salt as a chloride donor, followed by ammonium hydroxide -- clear household ammonia works -- to remove the silver chloride, OR alternating baths in strong hydrogen peroxide and acetic acid, all work), then a redevelop in room light, stop fix and wash as usual. Might take a few tests to get the exposure right (in my experience, this process gains some speed, but others, with other films and other developers, have reported the opposite).

If you don't mind dirty whites in the brightest regions, you could also make Sabatier reversals (I've seen these done on glass plates that looked very, very good; once again, it'll take a few tries to get the right ratio of exposure and reexposure on paper).

That is a good trick!