Make a B&W negative from a color slide

domaz · Mar 25, 2009

I have a few Color Slides I would like to try printing in B&W. I can't seem to find much on copying a slide to a B&W negative. Can anyone recommend a way to do it? My first though was to put the slide in my enlarger, figure out the enlarging "on" time I should use from a spot meter, and then expose the sheet and develop it normally. Or is it more complicated than that?

Konical · Mar 25, 2009

Good Afternoon, Domaz,

That's the basic approach. For details, use Forum Search. I recall a thread on the topic not too long ago.

Konical

keithwms · Mar 25, 2009

It's that simple. Yes, do a search. I do this quite often. You can put a piece of paper over a test sheet of film and withdraw it to nail down the exposure. I use tmax as the b&w film and it works well; you'll want to use a pan film or your tones will go awry.

sanking · Mar 25, 2009

Scan it! Very simple.

Analog methods are more difficult, and give less quality.

Go ask your question on the hybrid forum.

Sandy King

domaz said:
I have a few Color Slides I would like to try printing in B&W. I can't seem to find much on copying a slide to a B&W negative. Can anyone recommend a way to do it? My first though was to put the slide in my enlarger, figure out the enlarging "on" time I should use from a spot meter, and then expose the sheet and develop it normally. Or is it more complicated than that?

rternbach · Mar 25, 2009

Yes, scan in color and convert to b&w. But goto hybrid photo for more discussion.

Ektagraphic · Mar 26, 2009

Buy a slide duplicator that fits on you camera, and load your camera with black and white film. You could also scan.........

chriscrawfordphoto · Mar 26, 2009

If he wants to do a digital print, scanning is great, but if he wants a traditional print then he'll need to make a neg. The enlarger method others have suggested works well if you want a large format negative. The slidee duplicator method if you want a 35mm neg.

Shangheye · Mar 26, 2009

Slide copier using B&W film...and you can get them cheap on e-prey. K

Robert Brummitt · Mar 26, 2009

This is what I use to do when working for a commercial lab.
First, get a good mid tone B&W film 4x5 or 8x10. I used Ilford FP4.
Second, do some contact exposure tests to get the best range. I used a Stouffer step scale. You can also do projected tests but I never found much differance in time and f stop. I believed I was projecting F16 @ 10 or 15 seconds. More likely less. 8 seconds. Third, process the film and compare what exposure gives you the best range. I used Kodak D76. Again, nothing wild normal development. You don't want to blow out high lights.
I got some pretty good results.
Later, you can experiment to you hearts content.

StorminMatt · Mar 26, 2009

chriscrawfordphoto said:
but if he wants a traditional print then he'll need to make a neg.

Not necessarily. There is such a thing as B+W reversal paper. And I have seen it in the Freestyle catalog. Of course,I have never used it. But it would seem that one less duplication step would result in better quality.

domaz · Mar 26, 2009

Good point about using hybrid techniques. It probably would result in less overall quality loss. I'm not excited about calibrating my printer to print digital negatives though.

chriscrawfordphoto · Mar 26, 2009

StorminMatt said:
Not necessarily. There is such a thing as B+W reversal paper. And I have seen it in the Freestyle catalog. Of course,I have never used it. But it would seem that one less duplication step would result in better quality.

Cool, I'd never seen that. Need to dust off my Freestyle catalog!

chriscrawfordphoto · Mar 26, 2009

domaz said:
Good point about using hybrid techniques. It probably would result in less overall quality loss. I'm not excited about calibrating my printer to print digital negatives though.

If you intend your final output to be traditional silver prints, I'd probably not bother with scanning and making a digital neg to print from. I think the process of making an interneg in the darkroom would be easier. I've read up on making digital negs because it looks like a cool way to make repeatable silver prints from images that need a lot of dodging and burning (you do all that in photoshop and the digital neg will have all that set in it), but the process of getting an inkjet to produce a negative with the correct tonality looks very hard. If I were you I would only consider doing scanning if you want to make digital final prints, or if the slides are damaged and need work to remove scratches or embedded dust.

keithwms · Mar 26, 2009

An easy but slightly expensive way to do this is to scan and have an LVT made (e.g. at Chicago Albumen). The LVT negs are easier to work with than digital negs... to do digital negs right, you need to deduce the correct curves for your combination of paper, light source, ink type etc. If you have an LVT made, you can just tell them what your output will be (e.g. silver or Pt/Pd or whatever) and that's that. LVTs have *far* high resolution than inkjetted digital negs, won't give any banding at all, and can actually be enlarged considerably. The LVT can then be stored like a normal neg for reprinting later.

I used to be enthused about digital negs but now the only thing I use them for is cyanotypes. For silver they basically suck, in my experience. LVT is far better for silver, in my experience. (Mind you this is one of those things that I say knowing full well that somebody will follow up with "didn't you try this and this and this" and my answer is no, I don't feel like I was put on this earth to dick around ad nauseum with computers. I'll happily pay an LVT lab to do the dicking for me and give me a much higher quality result.)

Still... the cheapest and least computery solution of all is simply to dupe to tmax or such, it's very easy, can give excellent results, costs next to nothing... and doesn't involve photoshop or such.

Chazzy · Mar 27, 2009

If I enlarge a slide onto sheet film to make a negative, do I need to invert the slide to keep from getting reversed directions on the negative?

keithwms · Mar 27, 2009

Yep. Just realize that you want the emulsion side of your b&w dupe to go face down onto your paper, if you want to contact print. If you're enlarging the b&w neg for the print then it won't matter. But IMHO the biggest feature of this slide -> b&w workflow is being able to produce a *large* b&w neg for contact printing.

adamc · Oct 13, 2009

I am interested in doing this with 4x5.
I have 4x5 E6 images and 4x5 B&W film, I'll be using the negs for contact printing alt processes. In my mind it seems pretty easy...I'm thinking all I'd need to do is sandwich the positive e6 and the B&W emulsion to base, do some test strips, and develop like normal. Has anybody out there tried this, and if so is there anything I should be aware of?

Thanks,
Adam

Ektagraphic · Oct 13, 2009

Why don't you just get some black and white reversal paper to print the slides in black and white?

keithwms · Oct 13, 2009

adamc said:
I am interested in doing this with 4x5.
I have 4x5 E6 images and 4x5 B&W film, I'll be using the negs for contact printing alt processes. In my mind it seems pretty easy...I'm thinking all I'd need to do is sandwich the positive e6 and the B&W emulsion to base, do some test strips, and develop like normal. Has anybody out there tried this, and if so is there anything I should be aware of?

Thanks,
Adam

Yes, it works well. Is your b&w film panchromatic?

adamc · Oct 13, 2009

Panchromatic = yes

keithwms · Oct 13, 2009

Well then you're good to go. Do bracket exposure and development the first time. What you do is expose in strips, then cut the film perpendicular to those strips and develop those for rather different times e.g. N-2, N, N+2. Compare the results by contact printing and then you'll have the right exposure/dev combo from one test. Note that you may be printing to grade 2 or 1, that seems to be where I wind up when I do this. So you will probably want multigrade paper for starters.

The main problem you can have is highlight transitions being too fast. If your E6 film has blown highlights then there isn't much you can do to get them into the b&w film, but in some cases I like the effect (I posted some examples in the galleries)... and if you are really skilled then you can hand-dodge the highlights!

adamc · Oct 13, 2009

Great advice. Thanks!

Adam

keithwms · Oct 13, 2009

P.S. I found the link to one of the examples that I posted... this is from [somewhat blown] astia duped to tmax and printed to MGIV gr. 2 (yes, apparently I was attempting to use the products of every remaining film company on the planet....)

(there was a url link here which no longer exists)

Steve Smith · Oct 14, 2009

Ektagraphic said:
Buy a slide duplicator that fits on you camera, and load your camera with black and white film.

That would be my suggestion too. Obviously, it gives you a smaller negative than an enlarger created film but if you are more used to working with small negatives then this may be a better method.

Steve.

Aurum · Oct 14, 2009

StorminMatt said:
Not necessarily. There is such a thing as B+W reversal paper. And I have seen it in the Freestyle catalog. Of course,I have never used it. But it would seem that one less duplication step would result in better quality.

IIRC Maco in Europe do this as well. Like the Dia-Direkt film, not the most sensitive of emulsions, but if you're printing this isn't an issue. Just be aware that there is only one grade, so if you hanker for playing with multigrade paper or fibre, you're going to have to make an interneg to play with.

Note O/T, For Hybrid-alt process, a B&W laser printer and OHP acetate (Heat resistant naturally) do make a perfectly good interneg for stuff like Gum bichromate. Thats how I started trying out alt-process without risking decent, once in a lifetime LF negs

Make a B&W negative from a color slide

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