We always enjoy working with Rachel on this series of darkroom guides. We hope that you find them useful and that they have expanded your knowledge of darkroom printing and techniques. And, that they've given you the confidence to take the next steps in your darkroom printing journey. We'd love to hear about it in the comments if they have helped you. If there are any other topics that you would like to see covered in future videos then please let us know..
Great, short video - just what you need to know, not much else, presented in a professional, friendly way. That's Ilford! These guys rock - you are the heroes of the film community! Thanks!
The only problem with this is that b&w paper is not panchromatic and in particular, insensible to red - so if your frame contains reds they will be printed black-ish, just like when using orthochromatic films. So not all subjects are suited for this - portraits in particular. Kodak used to have a panchromatic b&w paper specific to print colour negatives - Panalure.
Stefano beat me to it! B&W paper is not panchromatic! One cannot get a full tonal spectrum on it from a color negative. Yes, one may get an "acceptable" print from some negatives, and I do not wish to discourage anyone from experimenting. However, I am very disappointed that Ilford put this video out without explaining the limitations. It is no small matter.
@@JDavidBrown Thanks for the feedback David. In hindsight, perhaps we should have mentioned this but we are only trying to show what is possible and give people the confidence to 'have a go' in the darkroom. (Obviously we'd prefer it if everyone only shot our black and white films and stayed away from colour ;)
great video, love to see all the papers, filters and chemistry still available and out there, but what about the other darkroom equipment, the enlargers especially would be good doing a video on them, how to go about choosing one, what size negs they accept, print sizes; as everything image 'processing' today is digital (perhaps a new market segment Harman?); especially considering all the 'simplicity' and other kits for negative processing, would be great to start innovating in the wet printing space.
We have looked at enlargers but there are so many choices out there. There are some companies making new ones such as Intrepid, Beseler, Paterson plus there are lots of secondhand ones available online. It's not something we're ruling out completely but i'm not sure we could fully do it justice.
@@Ilfordphoto thanks for the comment's give me some research terms, the besler looks great for a new 35 and 6x9 option but for 4x5 and 6x12 will have to keep looking, as that's a special lf enlarger to print 4x5s onto 5x7 or 8x10 paper prints; which is one of my desires, to do wet prints of lf sheet negs.
last year I printed 6x9 a colour slide onto Ilford DPP and it turned out brilliant! The slide had a bad colour shift, but that didn't matter to the B&W print. Thanks for this awesome darkroom series!!
Thanks for that! I have thought of that occasionally for decades. I did look at color negatives in an enlarger sometimes, but never gathered the courage to try. Because color negatives look so gibberish to the eye... I will give it a go next time I occupy my bathroom :)
What is the color film being used that’s has a far less apparent orange hue on the film border than other c41 color films? Or maybe it’s the video fooling my eyes.
a great video, and series, but one question, does a 'darkroom' always have to be a B&W one?, Rachel do you ever print the colour negatives, do Colour prints, or do Slide (transparency film) yourself?
Hi Andy. For us yes, it has to be black and white, but we may be a little biased;) You can print colour negatives in a darkroom but it must be in total darkness, no safelights and is a different process.
@@Ilfordphoto ah, yes, understand, for YOU only make it, but, I was also asking do you make slide film as well (still), and how do you go about exposing slide film,developing it ( aka does 'dodge&burn'/ selenium toning, filters, etc. done so far by Rachel in this series still apply to this medium), and mounting for projection on 35 mm single slide optical projectors.
Black & white photographic paper does not have the colour sensitivity required to reproduce the various different colours of a colour transparency as shades of grey, and if it did, these tones would appear somewhat inverted. To make a good black & white photographic darkroom print you really need a technically good traditional black & white film negative. You could photograph your transparency with a close-up camera onto black & white negative film to produce a black & white film negative of it, and this would be printable onto regular black & white paper, but with each ‘generation’ of copying or reproduction you will typically pick up a certain loss in image quality, eg. an unwanted rise in image contrast or a lessening of definition.
Great video! When I print color negatives on B&W paper I usually dial in cyan filter (at maximum) to increase contrast of the final print. It does make exposure times much longer, but it is worth it.
Hi Colby. There's no reason why not. If you use our standard Multigrade papers then you would get a negative print. Or, if you used the Direct Positive paper then you' would still get a positive.
You can make an internegative with one more step to get a final positive result. I describe my explorations in this blog post here. remorseblog.blogspot.com/2017/06/black-and-white-print-from-color-slide.html There are links to different methods as well.
@@Ilfordphoto I do shoot primarily black and white currently, specifically because I want to make prints. But I do occasionally shoot with color and have many years worth of color negatives from my past.
