Slides as Negative, is it possible?

[Joenail]

Been reading up about b&w conversions from Ektar, ie printed in a black & white darkroom, but is it possible to dev a colour transparency as a black & white negative (much like cross processing), or would the difference between C41 & black & white chemistry be too much & leave the film blank?

-J

 

[Jakska]

This might be of help I know the title is C-41 but they do have info on souping slide films too!

http://www.flickr.com/groups/c41inbw/

I don't know much about developing colour film in black & white chemicals but I quite often print colour negatives as black & white in the darkroom (either because I intended the shot to be black & white but only had colour film, or because I want a really nice print to send to someone that I've made myself and my university won't let me in the colour darkrooms because they're tight haha).

 

[s162216]

Hi,

Technically it could be possible as the first step of the E-6 process (first developer) is a phenidone type B&W developer which forms a silver negative of each layer of the film. Subsequently theres a water stop bath, a reversal bath and then a colour developer which forms dyes in each layer from colour couplers. This leaves a black and white image on top of a colour one, the B&W is then bleached away to leave the colour and fixed. You can do the same with C-41 films as the two processes are extremely similar with (hence why you can cross process them) but the C-41 process lacks the reversal bath.

All that you would need to do is only do the first (1st dev) and second step (stop wash) and then the fixing to get a negative B&W image, essentially the same as normal B&W processing. All colour processes involve creating a B&W image and then bleaching it away when the colour image is formed hence why you can 'bleach bypass' negative film (it doesn't work with E-6 though as your left with a negative on top of a positive) where the bleach step is skipped or reduced leaving the B&W layer, creating deep blacks and contrast with desaturated colours.