Black and white from colour film ???

[BADGER.BRAD]

Is Black and white from colour film as good as true black and white ? As my intention is to develop and scan my own film in the near future I wondered if there was any difference.

 

[bsdunek]

I think you'll find lower contrast. If you're PhotoShopping, then that's not a problem. Making wet B&W prints from color negatives never looks quite right.

 

[juan]

I'm not sure what you're planning. Do you mean to develop colour film as black and white, or do you mean to scan the colour negatives and convert them to black and white?
I developed color film with black and white chemistry many, many years ago and got black and white negatives, but I have no idea whether this would work with modern colour films.
As for the latter, I'd scan them in color, then make a conversion with your software (Capture One, Photoshop, Lightroom). There's a lot of information about making black and white conversions online. Yes, those look fine.
Kodak used to make a special paper called Panalure - it was made especially for making black and white prints from color negatives. Prints on regular black and white paper never looked right, in my opinion, either.

 

[removed account4]

hi brad

if you process your color film in black and white chemistry
you will have to dealwith the orange mask ( a different color if it is slide film )
caffenol stains the film so it masks it a little and it isn't as hardcore ...
but printing through it can take a lot of light. scanning it on the other hand you can eitehr
keep the funky color it ends up as ( i do that cause i like the color ) or you can just adjust the color
using color management tools ( hue/saturation you can desaturate individual colors to find what you want )
i can't remember which color channel they say is the best to keep if you scan a color negative to convert it to b/w
i thinkit is the blue channel is the closest to black and white contrast and tonality, so you get rid or the red and green
and save the best for last..

you can also go the other way around and take a black and white image and convert it to a color one by
scanning it, going to layers and stripping it into 3 separate layers/images adjust the color tint and restacking them in a new file
like doing a modern trichrome...
have fun!
john

 

[Bob Carnie]

Is Black and white from colour film as good as true black and white ? As my intention is to develop and scan my own film in the near future I wondered if there was any difference.

Ye I think there is a difference, my opinion as colour negative film has more emulsion layers than black and white film.

I do a lot of colour to BW conversion, there one is stripping the image apart and picking the best channels...
But when printing Black and White paper on enlarger with colour negative it really is a crapshoot to get good prints.

 

[Billy Axeman]

I guess the OP wants to shoot color and decide afterwards if he wants an end result in colour or B/W.
A flexible way in doing so is with the Channel Mixer, by which you can choose an emphasis on R, G or B channel.

When you are converting a color image (from film or digital) to B/W it always seems to have low contrast, even when the colour image looks bright and contrasty.

I wonder if that has to do with our brain because we have accustomed ourselves to (very) high contrast B/W images. An image with a normal range of gray values is quickly interpreted as flat, even when it has a full range of gray-values, so in practice much of the midtones are removed and the shadows and highlights enhanced to get 'good' contrast. The result might be pleasing but it is not an accurate representation of the reality.

That's my observation at least.

When I try to answer OP's question, I think factors to look at are dynamic range, tonality, and storage life (silver instead of dyes), but there are others who know more about that.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

Strip out the colour channels / convert to greyscale in post (after scanning, not at the scan-step) and there you have it.

 

[Billy Axeman]

If you are simply converting your colour photo with 'Grayscale' in your editor you could await an unpleasant surprise when you want to print your B/W image via an online printing service, because it isn't recognized as colour and possibly not accepted. So, keep your colour channels intact and convert with the Channel Mixer. It also allows you to fine-tune the result.

 

[removed account4]

hi billy axeman
yes this is true, BUT you can still
save it as a color image and printers have no problem with
a greyscale color image.

 

[Billy Axeman]

Good to know jnanian, how to escape from a hole when you have spent several days working on a bunch of files to discover they don't print
No, it didn't happen to me.

We still don't know though if it is a good idea to start with colour film if you want colour or B/W in the end. The OP is obviously hoping that colour film can cover all his needs, but generally it's an illusion to expect a universal solution without any disadvantages.

Personally I like the B/W film route because it potentially ensures maximum quality and by tweaking exposure and development you have extra tools to prevent excessive post-processing efforts (which usually degrades quality by itself). Developing B/W film yourself is also easy and it gives you control about every aspect of the workflow.

 

[removed account4]

Good to know jnanian, how to escape from a hole when you have spent several days working on a bunch of files to discover they don't print
No, it didn't happen to me.

We still don't know though if it is a good idea to start with colour film if you want colour or B/W in the end. The OP is obviously hoping that colour film can cover all his needs, but generally it's an illusion to expect a universal solution without any disadvantages.

Personally I like the B/W film route because it potentially ensures maximum quality and by tweaking exposure and development you have extra tools to prevent excessive post-processing efforts (which usually degrades quality by itself). Developing B/W film yourself is also easy and it gives you control about every aspect of the workflow.

i have a friend who is a commercial printer, and he told me