Darkroom printing a colour negative in B&W

[Ben johns]

I have some colour negatives that I would like to make prints of, would using them as I would a black and white negative make decent black and white prints or would it create strange contrast seeing as you use coloured filters in an enlarger for contrast?

On a side note I've just developed my first 4 rolls of HP5 in DDX at 400 and I'm really impressed. Even I'm using 6x6 negatives and only going up to 8x8 prints Im surprised by how well the grain is controlled. Using the grain focuser there seems to be less grain than FP4, though I do develop FP4 in Rodinal.

 

[Nod]

From memory (unreliable but better long than short term!), the contrast was a bit different as was the "colour" rendition. Experimentation is the only real answer (if wanting to keep it all darkroom - scanning and playing in PP will give better results if you want the end product to look like a B&W rendition of the scene.)

 

[excalibur2]

Well I used to do quite a bit of 8X10 culour prints in the darkroom and did them in B\W first (cheaper) to see in they were worth doing in colour ..the results were good, but I suppose it would depend on the colour neg.... Just set the enlarger for B\W with no filters. I never bothered to do the B\W proof prints with any care and amazingly are still good after about 20 years
This I haven't tried and a guess for quality results:- a colour shot scanned and converted to B\W and printed by an inkjet....................

 

[FujiLove]

I didn't like the results when I tried it. Maybe it was just my choice of negative or the paper I used, but the print was very low contrast and didn't have much punch to it. I didn't try it again!

 

[ancient_mariner]

I have done it, but the results are poor - low contrast, grain that's ugly, odd tonal response. Better to digitise and convert.

 

[excalibur2]

I didn't like the results when I tried it. Maybe it was just my choice of negative or the paper I used, but the print was very low contrast and didn't have much punch to it. I didn't try it again!

Well as said it depends on the colour neg....Olde worlde colour negs with pastel colours probably wouldn't look great but a punchy colour neg would be better. My favourite colour film was Kodak Vericolor and the results in B\W were good.