Because you want a black and white image from a color positive?
Of course these days you can scan it and convert to grayscale but if you want to do it all analog, there aren't any great options. All other black and white papers, with Panalure long gone, are insensitive to red, and VC papers, the vast majority these days, and at least sensitive to green as well as blue, will give different contrast in areas of different color as well. Of course I think this stuff is orthochromatic as well, but at least you don't have to reversal process it to experiment with it.
I prefer working analog but if I really wanted a black and white image from a color positive I'd do it digitally. But if you can't or don't want to do that, what the heck, this might be worth a shot.
Now that I have dark in my darkroom I tried making a direct positive print from a slide. I had some success with an Ektachrome 100 slide. Discovered I needed a red filter for my safelight, which I don’t have. I had less success with a Kodachrome flash picture of my kids, and I think my brown safelight was fogging the paper.
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...Dilettante! Who you calling a Dilettante?
I prefer to make b&w internegs from chromes by contact on pan b&w films like FP4 or TMax. That way, I can not only apply selective colored contrast filters just like when shooting in nature, but also control the resultant interneg contrast just the way I want it relative to my regular b&w papers of choice. Sometimes a supplementary unsharp contrast mask is necessary for the best results, registered to the original chrome.
Drew, I agree. If I were serious about this I would make internegatives, or even enlarged trichromes. Hmm…now that I have the time, I might make this an item on my bucket list.
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...Dilettante! Who you calling a Dilettante?
Well, some of the best color repro I've ever gotten was from Portra 160 contact internegs from masked old sheet chromes, mostly 8X10's, enlarged onto current Fuji RA4 papers. A lot of fussy work, but nothing like old dye transfer printing or even certain multi-masked Ciba images. The biggest issue is the sheer cost of 8X10 color film these day, including Portra. Not quite as painful if 4x5 is involved instead.
But since this thread has black and white prints as the endpoint, I vastly prefer to generate an interneg for that application too, onto a long-scale pan film like TMX, so I have complete control over the contrast gamma, as well as the option of using selective b&w contrast filters just like shooting in nature. And that way I can use any b&w printing paper of choice.
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