Using colour negs to print B&W prints....

[Bullseye]

Ok I'm going to do black and white printing, just wondering though, while it sounds a daft question... Is it possible to print onto B&W using colour negs.


Thanks in advance.


~John~

 

[Mark Fisher]

It is....sort of. BW paper is not panchromatic so the tonal production is way off. It is also difficult to get enough contrast in the prints. I would expect you will be disappointed in the results.

 

[john_s]

Kodak used to make a black and white paper that reproduced colour negs as realistic shades of grey, called Panalure.

Printing a colour neg onto standard B+W paper causes some distortion of grey scales, but depending on the subject it might be acceptable.

 

[jeffreyg]

There was a paper for that purpose. I believe it is/was called Panalure from Kodak. Does it still exist???

http://jeffreyglasser.com/

 

[ic-racer]

Panalure:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/g27/g27.pdf

 

[pentaxuser]

Have a go. Using VC paper, try at least grade 3.5 and expect longer exposures but while tonal range may not be what an afficionado would expect from a B&W neg it will be far from a disaster. I have done it and with some negs the results were very acceptable.

pentaxuser

 

[removed account4]

i do it all the time ( or used to at least )
it will work fine. the tonal range will be
more like a 19th century image seeing
the paper isn't panchromatic. it will be
like putting a piece of paper in your camera
and printing THAT.

have fun !
john

 

[jeffreyg]

A quick search found that Panalure was discontinued in 2005. I have used x-ray duplicating film to enlarge negatives for pt/pd printing. It is a reversal film and has excellent tonal reproduction. I don't know how it would work with color negatives since I've only used it wit b&w. i don't have a color head so I don't know if filters would be needed to try that route. Check with a dentist to see if he has some of that film which is processed in his regular x-ray film chemistry. Over here it is Kodak GBX. Agfa made a similar film, but I don't know if they still do.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/

 

[gurkenprinz]

I have printed quite a few color negs as B+W - you should be ok for most subjects, but keep in mind that you will probably need longer exposure and a higher contrast than with your usual b+w negative. Skin tones on caucasians: not so nice Haven't found a way around that except for lith printing where it doesn't seem to matter so much...


br, gurkenprinz

 

[hpulley]

Do a search. There's an old thread about this that refers to an old 1998 web page, still up, which goes over it and shows what works well. Panalure was best but it is gone. Otherwise you can experiment with filters and see what you get. The trouble is that VC paper uses color to change the contrast so blue and green will do odd things and of course the paper isn't very sensitive to red which is why we can use safelights... so red will appear white. If you filter it heavily enough it might work.

 

[Robert Brummitt]

Pre-flash

When I worked for a photolab, we would pre-flash our paper to bring in the tones needed to print B&W from color negs. We used ilford's MG paper.

 

[hpulley]

Any details on the pre-flash? How much?

 

[Robert Brummitt]

We would raise the enlarger circle of light to cover the size of paper. Put the light out of focus. Close down the aperture to f16-22, we used Ilford's multigrade heads so we would select grades 2 to 4 and expose the paper for 1/2 second or more. Sometime 5 seconds to bring down the contrast.
Color neg film is really contrasty compare to regular B&W film. That is what I was taught. We had lots and lots of portrait photographers who used color neg film and cover their bases by having us print color and B&W proofs for them.