Printing B&W from colour negs

[philldresser]

Apologies for the trivial questions but I have a session booked in the darkroom later this week where I wish to print a shot of my recently departed Mother to distribute to the family. The picture is on 35mm colour negative film and although I am quite proficient in printing B&W I have never attempted to print B&W from colour.

Are there any pitfalls that I should avoid. What grade paper should I start from and is any B&W filtration required to counteract/balance the colours?

Regards

Phill

 

[Eric Rose]

Kodak makes a paper specifically for this. You have to develop/stop/fix it in total darkness but the results are very impressive.

 

[clogz]

Isn't it called Panalure or something?

 

[lee]

that is the name of the paper to use for best results.


lee\c

 

[DKT]

Panalure comes in 3 grades--hard, medium and soft. I mostly use it in the medium grade, which is good for general use, but it just depends on what the original neg is like. If you have access to a color head, you can use it to dial in filter packs to adjust the tonal separation a bit. With Panalure, if you use cyan filtration, you can add about a half grade more contrast. For certain negs, sometimes I have had to resort to using another enlarger to flash the paper to cut the contrast...the paper is panchromatic, so you can tweak the tones with filters, but it needs to be processed in the dark or with very dim safelights like c-paper. It's gettting kind of hard to find now, but the medium grade is probably the best to start off with, unless the original is super flat or contrasty. Kodak used to have some pretty good tech sheets on using panalure, hope this helps a bit though.

KT

 

[philldresser]

Thanks everyone. It pays to have freinds in the know.

I have managed to get the Kodak document sheet (pdf) on PANALURE and I am now trying to trace a supply in the UK. Jessops list it @£55 per100 sheets. I will try some other suppliers tomorrow.

Many thanks

Phill

 

[Nige]

Disclaimer : I've never tried this.....

But, I've read on the 'net... that you can make prints from colour negs on VC paper. They say you need to increase contrast substaintially but can get a good print.

My experience with Ilfospeed graded papers many moons ago, however was not good, unless you like horendously grainy, funny toned print! It printed but was unacceptable.

So, if you can't get your hands on any Panalure, maybe give it a try on some VC paper (and report back if it worked!)

 

[DKT]

I have done that as well--using MGIII and IV. You have to use a contrast usually of 3.5+ and the final print can be all over the place depending on what you're looking for...what I mean is, it could be okay or a total piece of crap....if the shot is portrait or something with any sort of realistic tones in it, then Panalure is probably the best bet....fwiw, there used to be one or two other papers on the market like this, I want to say Oriental made one, but don't quote me, maybe someone else remembers. Panalure can be pricey though...I had to make about 200 or so 5x7s from some color negs awhile back where I work and the price was about twice what a regular box of paper would have been....but it was worth it, because printing on regular paper looks horrible compared to panalure.

good luck & this is probably a useless answer, but if you can find a processor to use, that makes life much easier with this material...

 

[glbeas]

</span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (DKT @ Feb 24 2003, 07:47 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> good luck &amp; this is probably a useless answer, but if you can find a processor to use, that makes life much easier with this material... </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'>
Yep, processing tubes work just as well for B&W as they do for color. I have a big one for making prints bigger that my trays will handle.

 

[SteveGangi]

Processing tubes are very very good for this. I have the 8x10 and 16x20 tubes. Mine are the Unicolors, but Beselers or any other make should do fine too. I tried VC papers once with color film, and the results were pretty bad. No amount of tweaking helped.

 

[Les McLean]

I've made acceptable 8 x 10 prints from colour negatives using both Ilford MG III and IV as well as Agfa MCC. Because of the base fog of the colour negative it is necessary to use a harder grade 3.5 or 4 to build any contrast, in my experience. I also had some rather grainy results which I think were caused by the brand of colour film used, unfourtunately it is so long ago that I can't remember which film I did use.

 

[Ed Sukach]

My experince here seems to be somewhat different.

My photograph, "Untitled", top center of page 2 in the Standard Gallery here, was taken with Agfacolor 400 color negative film, and printed on Ilford MutiGrade IV - Portfolio.

The enlarging exposure was unusually long: On the order of 100 seconds @ f/5.6, when the usual is about 30 seconds. My first test exposures seemed to have *too much* contrast... so the dichroic filtration on my enlarger (Omega D5500) was eventually set to what would be the equivalent of ~ Grade 1.5 or so.

Of course the color-to-black-and-white "coding" is not accurate. I like it the way it is, though - therefore, that is the way it will be.

 

[SteveGangi]

I never exposed anywhere near that long... maybe that was the problem. Thanks there