Enlarging colour negs onto b&w paper.

Asha

Asha

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Asha
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Very mixed views on the internet concerning the use of b&w paper to make monochrome wet prints from colour negatives.

Seems that exposures are long ( that’s no surprise) and that reasonable results can be had by using high contrast filters / papers.

So what’s the opinion of those in the know here in TP?

I’ll likely give it go , if only for the experience so if anyone has any tips that may help to improve the end result, I’m all ears.
 
My experience is very limited, and gained using fixed grade papers rather than variable contrast. Tones may have been unusual, but the results were about on a par with my normal very poor quality prints.

Kodak used to make a special paper (Panalure) for this purpose.
 
Asha said:
Very mixed views on the internet concerning the use of b&w paper to make monochrome wet prints from colour negatives.
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The problem is that most print paper has always been Orthochromatic, so the orange mask of most colour negative film means that the tone range on ordinary paper is thoroughly screwed up (to use a technical term).

The fix is to use Panchromatic printing paper and colour printing filters to get something like a sensible tone range. So far as I'm aware, no sheet paper is still made and Ilford only sell it in roll form. It never was cheap and I've no idea how much it costs now.

Being Panchromatic, the only safelight that you could use is a very dim brown. When I did this sort of thing (several decades ago) I just worked in the dark.

A scanner and an inkjet printer will give you far better results.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
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A scanner and an inkjet printer will give you far better results.
Click to expand...
I had a similar problem a couple of years ago but no negatives. The 'Rogues Gallery' of past vicars in the village church, dating back to 1890, had been added to in the last 10 years with 3 new pictures taken on digital cameras and inkjet printed, they were fading fast and the original files were not available and they wanted sepia toned B&W copies with archival permanence. Scanned the prints and adjusted in PS to recover detail and contrast. Printed onto A4 matte photo paper and rephotographed on FP4+. Printed and sepia toned on Ilford Fibre paper.

I think scanning and inkjet printing the reversed negs in colour then rephotographing in B&W would give you a good workround and a negative for archiving.

Alternatively buy one of the 54 inch width darkroom laser printers Ilford Labs use and a roll of paper and a processing machine. That might work out a bit pricey :rolleyes:
 
Asha said:
Very mixed views on the internet concerning the use of b&w paper to make monochrome wet prints from colour negatives.

Seems that exposures are long ( that’s no surprise) and that reasonable results can be had by using high contrast filters / papers.

So what’s the opinion of those in the know here in TP?

I’ll likely give it go , if only for the experience so if anyone has any tips that may help to improve the end result, I’m all ears.
Click to expand...
My input to a previous thread on this. (and my darkroom didn't explode ;) ) https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/t...negatives-in-b-w-darkroom.716094/post-8787481
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
The problem is that most print paper has always been Orthochromatic, so the orange mask of most colour negative film means that the tone range on ordinary paper is thoroughly screwed up (to use a technical term).

The fix is to use Panchromatic printing paper and colour printing filters to get something like a sensible tone range. So far as I'm aware, no sheet paper is still made and Ilford only sell it in roll form. It never was cheap and I've no idea how much it costs now.

Being Panchromatic, the only safelight that you could use is a very dim brown. When I did this sort of thing (several decades ago) I just worked in the dark.

A scanner and an inkjet printer will give you far better results.
Click to expand...
i like technical terms like that!…… straightforward and easy to understand :LOL:

As for scanning Inkjet printing….. the image on the negative isn’t so important to send me down that route :)
 
As with all "non-standard" processes, experimentation is the answer but once the recipe (paper choice, filtration etc) is sorted, it's repeatable. Been way too long since I did any B&W prints from colour negs to be able to offer a recipe but from (unreliable, as always!) memory, I used no filters and got reasonable results.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys.

I’ve had a quick play this morning with a colour negative.

Basically the result is a photograph which is better than no photograph at all but I won’t be making the process into a regular one!
 
Thinking back, the films I did were of the Moscow City Circus and were shot under tungsten (and other artificial!) lights on daylight film so the colour results had a significant (rather an understatement!!!) orange cast on them, hence the try at B&W printing of them and the (comparatively) reasonable results. Weird what one can dredge up from the depths of memory from 40+ years ago although remembering whether I've had a cuppa this afternoon is a mystery!!!
 
Black and white paper is mostly red light safe, unfortunately colour negatives have quite a red base, there lies the problem
 
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