colour to black and white

[Rob A]

hey guys, i was wandering if i had a colour film developed, would i be able to take into a black and white darkroom and use the enlargers there etc... to process it in black and white?

if so does it come up as shard etc...?

thanks!

 

[santino]

if the pics have not too much red, it would work but you won't get real white tones, they would be a bit gray.

 

[Rob A]

ok, thanks!!

 

[j_mcquillen]

It works... but your pics will be lacking in contrast slightly compared to normal b+w film - think this is due to the coloured base layer you get on most colour negs (the bit that gives the characteristic orange colour to Kodak negs, for example). Use a high contrast paper to compensate.

There might be an issue with increased grain size, but I'm not 100% sure on that. Use it to your advantage for atmospheric, grainy shots if there is!

 

[ksmattfish]

My experience is that they tend to print very low contrast, and the grain is more noticable in BW. I don't think it's actually bigger, but somehow the color hides it better.

 

[oriecat]

I've printed a handful of color pics on bw. Some were easy to print, usually just adding a 3 or 3.5 filter and some I couldn't get to work for anything. Kodak makes a special paper for printing color on black & white called Panalure, but I never tried it, it seems like it was pretty expensive and had to be processed in the dark iirc.

 

[SLOShooter]

It'd seem to me that you could apply a filter to bring the contrast back out of the color. Might have to play around with it a bit.

 

[Hertz van Rental]

Colour neg film has an amber base. Normal B/W papers are only sensitive in the blue region so you need long exposures and you get low contrast.
Kodak do a panchromatic photopaper called Panalure for doing this job. But you need to handle it in total darkness just like film. Works well, though.