processing c41 with BW chemicals?

[monica_alonso]

<p>Hello,<br>

I am curious to know if it is effective to process c41 film with balck and white chemicals/process? what is the result and is it worth doing?</p>

<p>Thank you</p>

[yockenwaithe]

<p>You can, though in my experience there's no real point as true black and white films are MUCH cheaper to both buy and process, you'll just get a black and white negative with tons of density anyhow. I'd get your C41 film developed in C41 devloper and just desaturate it post-process, then you'll get both the color and the black and white image</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>I've done it on a few occassions, and yes it can be done. The results are very dense B&W negatives, not great. I scan, and given the density of negatives, the scans are quite mediocre. As a developer, I think the standard recommendation for this is Rodinal; it's what I used. As a rough guideline, I've used times for Kodak Tri-X 400 at ISO400 with Rodinal 1:50, and this gave the most reasonable usable results.<br /> The main reason I used it a few times is the fact that I've got a bunch of colour film that was a gift, and to test cameras a bit, I used these rolls to reduce costs. So the example photo is just a testshot, one of the more usable ones, most do look even worse.</p>

<p>P.S. Where I live, real B&W film is no way cheaper to buy than C41, and for all I see in most places, you can get simple entrylevel films like ColorPlus 200 or Fuji C200 for less than what cheap B&W film costs. </p><div></div>

[IanRivlin]

The great thing about shooting color is that you've

got a built-in raft of filters. If you shoot color and

scan, then convert to black and white, you can

increase or decrease each color channel at will and

have effects that could never be achieved with pan

film. My advice? If you have color film, get it

developed in color. Your results will end up far

better.

[Mike Gammill]

<p>Even cheap C41 color or slightly past date will deliver good results in C41 chemistry. If you convert to black & white after scanning the quality will be far better than you would get if you process the film in conventional black & white chemistry. If you have several rolls to send out at once you can save on postage. Some offer a good price for scans at the time of processing.</p>

[glen_h]

<p>I have wondered about C-41 black and white film in B&W developer.</p>

<p>With color C41, you get the three layers as black images, but likely not in the right proportion.</p>

<p>I suppose with the right color filter on the lens you could fix that, but why? How long will it take to figure out the right filter pack?</p>

<p>OK, I have some C41 color film of unknown storage conditions. I could develop some just to see if it is close to good enough to try C41 processing on. That is the only reason I would do it.</p>

[jnanian]

<p>you will get a dense orange mask. if you process E6 you will get a mask as well ( not orange )<br>

prnting takes extra contrast filters and extra time because the negatives are a bit dense at times<br>

i don't have a local lab that will process E6 or C41 bigger than 35mm anymore and rather than<br>

deal with shipping out of state i just process it all in either caffenol C with a little dekol mixed in, or dektol,<br>

or half the time in dektol and half the time in caffenolc with a little dektol, never really have much trouble<br>

but im not a perfectionist, YMMV</p>