Printing B&W images from Colour negs?

[lars369]

Hi. I'm new to the site and in fact pretty new to photography.

I have a question of, can i print B&W images from colour negs. And if i can do it how do i do it? And if i can do it, what type of results would i get?
I have a pretty basic understanding of the printing process and i hope someone can help me with this inquiry.
Im sorry if this topic had already been talked bout but i couldn't bothered going through all 100 pages of threads.
Thanks.

[Bill_1856]

Certainly you can. Use Seagull Chromagenic paper in total darkness. You can even use filters on the lens (or the lighthead) to change the contrast of specific colored objects. You can even use regular paper, but it will look like you've shot the negative on orthochromic film -- you remember ortho don't you?

[Brian Ellis]

Are you talking about darkroom or digital printing? Digitally it's very simple, there are probably ten or fifteen different ways of doing it in Photoshop. Darkroom requires the use of a special paper as Bill mentions. Kodak used to make a paper for this (called Panalure?) but I don't know whether it's still around given Kodak's exit from the b&w paper business.

[Donald Qualls]

Seagull also used to make a panchromatic silver-image B&W paper (work in total darkness, but process in regular B&W developers like Dektol or Neutol), but it's been gone for at least a couple years. I don't know if there's a silver-image panchro paper left.

Another way (possibly the best way, from a wet-darkroom standpoint) to make a B&W print from a color negative is to make an interpositive on panchro film, then make an internegative from that (which can be on ortho film, so you can work under safelight), and make the final print from the internegative. If you use XP-2 and process your own C-41, you can (in theory) cut one step from this, by developing first in B&W developer, light fogging, and then going through a full C-41 process to produce a positive dye image (in this case, a negative, because it's a reversal positive of a negative original) on clear base that can be printed with ordinary B&W darkroom techniques.