Contact printing slide film onto color negative

[apatnaik]

Hello!

I apologize if I am repeating a question already asked here, but I was wondering if anyone had any tips/advice around possibly contact printing/copying slide film onto color negative film?

I am shooting on a 4x5 format, and do have a fairly functional darkroom. I have some slide 4x5 positives I was hoping to copy onto color so that I can print them on RA-4. The original negatives are on Provia. I was wondering if I could get some guidance/advice on this topic. I would love to keep this process in the darkroom rather than scan and print. I would really appreciate any advice/resources on this topic!

Thanks again!
A


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[Dugan]

Back in the day, Kodak made a Vericolor Internegative film in 35mm, (6011, IIRC) long-roll, and also in sheet form. It was mostly used in professional photo labs.
Any of that would be very expired, if you could find it.
It was low-contrast material, to avoid contrast gain during the process.
Hopefully Drew Wiley can give you some advice on how to proceed using modern materials.

[apatnaik]

Back in the day, Kodak made a Vericolor Internegative film in 35mm, (6011, IIRC) long-roll, and also in sheet form. It was mostly used in professional photo labs.
Any of that would be very expired, if you could find it.
It was low-contrast material, to avoid contrast gain during the process.
Hopefully Drew Wiley can give you some advice on how to proceed using modern materials.

Thank you so much for the information Dugan! I apologize, with color film being so expensive these days, I wanted to go into this with a plan. I was wanting to just make contact copies onto 4x5 negative sheet film from 4x5 slides. Would there still be an issue with contrast in that scenario?

I also have some standard negatives on slides with a color checker which was what I was hoping to start doing some testing with, to see how the negative film responds but there are still a lot of unknowns like you said, which materials would respond best here and I would def hope to save some money on testing if I can :)


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[Drew Wiley]

There are certain tricks to doing it well. Portra 160 is an excellent internegative film. But you still might end up with too much contrast unless you either flash or unsharp mask the original. You also need some way to tame Newton rings in the contact frame since you'll want to contact expose emulsion to emulsion, which leaves the slick base side of the original slide next to the glass. Anti-Newton glass helps. Then you need some way to precisely register the two films together. An actual film punch and matching pin-registered printing frame would be a wise investment. Your exposure light source (an enlarger colorhead is preferable) should be set to approximately photographic Daylight, somewhere between 5200 and 5500K using a color temp meter.

Contrast masking requires a punch and register system unless you want to go insane. I won't go into the details here, but there's quite a bit involved in that case too. I have posted on the topic many times before, and please realize that doing it correctly for sake of color internegs is somewhat different than masking black and white originals. Chrome films often require rather aggressive masking, around .60 Dmax on average. There's a learning curve to it requiring quite a bit of practice. But it has distinct advantages over flashing, especially now that official interneg sheet films have been discontinued. Both FP4 and TMax100 are good masking film choices.

[apatnaik]

There are certain tricks to doing it well. Portra 160 is an excellent internegative film. But you still might end up with too much contrast unless you either flash or unsharp mask the original. You also need some way to tame Newton rings in the contact frame since you'll want to contact expose emulsion to emulsion, which leaves the slick base side of the original slide next to the glass. Anti-Newton glass helps. Then you need some way to precisely register the two films together. An actual film punch and matching pin-registered printing frame would be a wise investment. Your exposure light source (an enlarger colorhead is preferable) should be set to approximately photographic Daylight, somewhere between 5200 and 5500K using a color temp meter.

Contrast masking requires a punch and register system unless you want to go insane. I won't go into the details here, but there's quite a bit involved in that case too. I have posted on the topic many times before, and please realize that doing it correctly for sake of color internegs is somewhat different than masking black and white originals. Chrome films often require rather aggressive masking, around .60 Dmax on average. There's a learning curve to it requiring quite a bit of practice. But it has distinct advantages over flashing, especially now that official interneg sheet films have been discontinued. Both FP4 and TMax100 are good masking film choices.

Thank you so much for the reply! I hope to be able to make some progress on soon and do some testing in the darkroom.

In regards to the pin registration systems, I was was wondering if you knew if there are any sellers here on the forum or outside that sell those? I use a somewhat home-made solution for this, but I would love to buy a proper one, that I can use for masking purposes.


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[Drew Wiley]

Once in awhile a fully matched clean set shows up. Condit is the best, but now getting scarce even used, and potentially pricey. Ctein had his own well-used 4x5 set for sale earlier this year; I don't know if it's still available or not. Heiland now offers something comparable new, but will itself probably be on the somewhat expensive side. But given the fact most people spend at least as much or even more for yet another 35mm SLR lens they seldom use, it's just a matter of priorities. Some individual SUV tires cost more.

It's important that the punch and registered contact printing frame are made at the same time, or else there will be tricky re-adjustment issues. You don't need a registered negative carrier unless you're planning on doing sequential tricolor printing via enlargement, like for classic dye transfer printing. If you have decent machine shop skills and equipment, yes, you could make your own; but it's hard to get a good idea unless you look at something extant first. All kinds of larger pre-press punches and register bars could hypothetically be used, and these are readily available from outfits like Ternes-Burton or Olec-Stoesser; but a scaled-down 1/16th inch micro-pin system is way more convenient when dealing with film up to 8X10, and not larger.