Printing color negatives as B&W

[oldglass]

Anybody do this regularly?
Are you happy with the results?

[nicholai]

For this to work i guess you should have panchromatic paper. Does that even exist? You'll loose all red details otherwise.

[darkroom_rookie]

Ilford Galerie Digital Silver, panchromatic or very near-panchromatic FB and RC papers from Harman.

https://www.focusnordic.dk/Product/ILF-DIG-SILV

https://www.focusnordic.dk/Product/4421170960

[ann]

my students do it all the time, times will be longer and contrast needs to be in the grade 4 range

[BMbikerider]

You will find that the grain is MASSIVE. Even on fine grained colour 100iso film B&W film of the same sped will beat it hands down, I think it may be something to do with the red dyes not being recognised on B&W paqper

[edcculus]

My aunt is a professional portrait photographer. Toward the end of her film path, when digital was starting to pick up, she would use chromogenic C-41 film for some of her personal/family stuff she still wanted to print in the darkroom. I have her enlarger now, and she told me if I wanted to do it, the exposure time is almost doubled, and increase the contrast filter to around 3 or 4 on Ilford paper.

[Chan Tran]

Kodak used to make a paper for this purpose. It was supposed to be processed in EP-2 (or it's RA-4 now). They don't make it any more.

[Photo Engineer]

You should not use VC papers with color negatives as the contrast varies with the color and can give some odd results.

Kodak made a B&W panchromatic paper that was processed as a normal B&W paper in Dektol or something similar.

PE

[Prof_Pixel]

Kodak used to make a paper for this purpose. It was supposed to be processed in EP-2 (or it's RA-4 now). They don't make it any more.

If I remember correctly, Kodak made a B&W color dye paper in the '70s - it was a special purpose paper designed for things like ID cards (and such) that needed B&W images.

[pentaxuser]

Maybe I was lucky(in the sense of using VC paper and maybe having no reds in the neg) but I was very pleased with the results. They were 1970s colour negs and had suffered but the B&W prints were very good. Not what you'd get with a B&W neg of course and if B&W is your thing then go for B&W but if you want prints from old colour negs that may be fading or simply want to have the occasional B&W prints then the results in my experience aren't bad

pentaxuser