Can I develop colour paper in B&W chems?

mkillmer · Aug 14, 2012

I have a bunch of colour paper I've inherited - can I use color film negative in the enlarge end then develop the colour paper in a B&W developer?

Gerald C Koch · Aug 14, 2012

You could but you wouldn't get a color print. In addition the print would probably lack contrast and be rather muddy in appearance.

MattKing · Aug 14, 2012

I take it that the OP is essentially hoping to use the colour paper as a replacement for Panalure. It would be interesting to see the results.

How stable might the results be?

Prof_Pixel · Aug 14, 2012

MattKing said:
How stable might the results be?

Assuming the poster uses the traditional B&W processing chemicals. as stable as any other RC base B& silver print. As mentioned earlier, the prints will be low in density and contrast because color papers contain much lower silver levels than B&W papers.

BMbikerider · Aug 14, 2012

I would have thought to get anything at all that would be recognisable, then he would have to use a bleach/fix and not just a normal fixer. In the past I tried devloping C41 film in B&W chemicals and there was absolutely nothing usable

Prof_Pixel · Aug 14, 2012

BMbikerider said:
I would have thought to get anything at all that would be recognisable, then he would have to use a bleach/fix and not just a normal fixer.

Using a bleach/fix would result in a blank piece of paper. A bleach/fix is only useful when you have a dye image; using a B&W developer will only produce a (poor) silver image.

David Lyga · Aug 14, 2012

OH, OH, OH, BM Bikerider: you err.

Developing C-41 film (either the chromogenic or color) gets a very nice negative for you with a light, pretty orange cast if you do the following.

You must expose two full stops more than for C-41 chemical processing.

You must develop in standard B&W developer for about twice as long as for, say, Tri-X.

You must stop and fix as for the standard B&W process.

Then comes the fun part: Farmers reducer: watch carefully as the density peels away from the unexposed parts. You will be left with a beatuiful negative.

Athiril · Aug 15, 2012

Ive recently printed some Portra 400 to Ilford Multigrade IV RC pearl. It worked very well, the times werent long and I was able to print different contrasts with different methods. Results were nice.

Last time I processed C-41 in b&w it was great at both rodinal 1+100 1 hour stand and also 1+25 8 minutes (with the addition of 5g/L sodium chloride iirc), that resulted in nice images. Obviously fix but dont bleach.

For the second method.. too dense overexposing from box speed, but from box speed to quite a bit of underexposure was very nice. I reprocessed them to colour afterwards though didnt leave them as b&w.

RPC · Aug 15, 2012

Athiril said:
Ive recently printed some Portra 400 to Ilford Multigrade IV RC pearl. It worked very well, the times werent long and I was able to print different contrasts with different methods. Results were nice.

Weren't the tonal values a bit off since the paper has no red sensitivity?

Athiril · Aug 15, 2012

RPC said:
Weren't the tonal values a bit off since the paper has no red sensitivity?

Not that I noticed, a colour chart would be a test for that rather than my portrait.

There is no red dye, just magenta and yellow, so it should have some sensitivity in some portion to those, but I guess blue and green would print down more.

One could always rig up a colder light in their enlarger etc such as with leds on a battery.

Photo Engineer · Aug 15, 2012

Printing color negative film onto any VC paper results in some odd tones due to both the lack of red sensitivity and to the contrast variations in the blue and green sensitive layers.

PE

Athiril · Aug 15, 2012

dont know what size thisll come up as i am copying from fb on phone but here is one set

first test all unfiltered

second test using graded filters, which the green background (magenta dye on neg) is still being affected by.

o

Can I develop colour paper in B&W chems?

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