Printing from slides traditionally - interneg or ?

[Jedidiah Smith]

Some of you are probably following my recent threads on setting up the color darkroom. I have the Phototherm on the way, and looks like Will is going to go through a lot of trouble for me and try shipping the Nutek RA4 processor up here. (I am mighty grateful for that!) So, the upside is that I'll be switching to color negs and processing/printing all in my darkroom along with the B&W.

Now an aside...I've been shooting chromes for the last year and a half - have a bit of a collection going, and I'd like to see if I can print these traditionally when I get the color darkroom going. I've always just scanned and had my work printed digitally, mostly on RA4 on Fuji Crystal Archive paper.

What's the best luck you've had with internegs? There is a good pro-lab in town that will do a 4x5 interneg with custom burning, dodging and color balance correction for about $20. I've had them print a 20x30 for me off of one of those internegs and the result is gorgeous. Only problem is...I don't have a 4x5 enlarger, so can't print them myself at this point.
My other thought is, could I make my own internegs on 35mm negative film? Would they be any good? I think there is some kind of a slide copier setup that I can get for my manual (MD mount) Minolta gear...but never used anything like it, so I'm up for opinions or suggestions.
Thanks,
Jed

 

[Photo Engineer]

I make internegatives using Portra VC and a pull process. I balance my enlarger for daylight with 100C and 30M. This gives good negatives from most slides.

Sometimes I print slides onto Endura paper directly and cross process the Endura to yield a direct positive.

PE

 

[Mick Fagan]

Jed, assuming your enlarger is a 6x6 or 6x7 capable model, you could use the 35mm tranny and enlarge to a 4x5 interneg but keep it to a size the will fit into your enlarger.

I used to do this before I had a 4x5 enlarger, very successful.

Mick.

 

[PVia]

PE

...what kind of cross process is that?

 

[dmax]

Jed,
I'd highly recommend purchasing a Beseler dual mode slide duplicating unit. When we purchased the first unit for our lab decades ago, the unit cost close to 1K USD new. Nowadays they go for about a hundred in that infamous auction place, often for less. I still have one of these Beseler duplicators for my own interneg and duping requirements.

The unit has three channels (cyan, magenta, yellow) with 200 units on each that you can simply dial in to balance filtration, and you can shoot with either tungsten or with the built in flash. It has a bellows unit that takes a T mount to accommodate any camera body. The best thing I like about it is that it has a contrast control unit that allows you to dial in minute increments the degree of "flattening" you need in your final image. This permits a great degree of control over the type of film you use and how much inherent contrast it has. I hope this helps.

 

[Photo Engineer]

PE

...what kind of cross process is that?

Please use 'search' here or on Photo Net. This has been discussed many many times here and there with posted examples.

PE

 

[srs5694]

...what kind of cross process is that?

The basic process is to expose the paper, develop it in a conventional B&W developer, stop it, wash it (but do not fix it!), expose it to light to reverse the image, and then run it through the normal RA-4 process. The result tends to be high in contrast and the colors are sometimes odd, but it works well for some photos.

I've tried this a few times with mixed results; I got good results once but on a couple of occasions I was unable to get a color balance I'd consider acceptable, and once I got ugly mottled skies. I believe the choice of paper and B&W developer may be critical in getting good results, but I don't know precisely what works best. I think PE posted a formula for a B&W developer that he uses for this process, but I don't have the URL handy.

 

[Craig]

What's the best luck you've had with internegs?

I can't say as I've had much luck with internegs. I've had much better prints with Ilfochrome, as it's a direct positive to positive process. Sometimes there are contrast problems, but much depends upon the original slide.

 

[Jedidiah Smith]

Yeah, I hear you Craig. I believe most of the "luck" with internegs is the quality of the interneg itself - I've read they are pretty hard to do right, lots of flare, etc involved, and you need a good setup...like I said, one of the pro-labs in town here is known for taking pride in theirs...very nice quality.

Those were some good suggestions. I looked at the Beseler duplicator - nice machine, but it would cost about 1.5x the price of the machine just to ship it to me.
That's an interesting idea, just to enlarge the interneg up to a medium format size...I'll look into that.
I also called the lab, and they said they could make a 35mm "dupe on a neg" for me - wouldn't be as good as their 4x5 offering (that is custom work), but more of a straight dupe. Anyway, I'll try to figure out the best option here, and if worse comes to worse...might be a good excuse to get a 4x5 enlarger! hehehe (now just to convince the wife on that one!)
Thanks again for the exploration,
Jed

 

[Michel Hardy-Vallée]

I'm tempted at some point to use my Leitz ELDIA for either B&W or color internegatives from slides. It's a nice little thingy, that looks like a Leica body, but is in fact a 35mm contact printer. You load it with blue-sensitive print film, then you place a strip of negative in the holder, close the lid, and expose the films in contact under the enlarger. Then you advance the film in the ELDIA, and you can start over again with another negative. When you're done, load the film on a spiral, and process.