Colour film in b&w chemicals

[traveler_101]

Has anyone ever tried it?

I have an old roll of 200 colour film exposed maybe 10-15 years ago sitting around. It belonged to a family member. Rather than paying what has now become a small fortune here to have it developed, I have thought about doing it myself in XTOL or Rodinal.

Could you get b&w images out of a colour roll? If it could work in theory does anyone have any idea how to estimate development times?

 

[sebastel]

i did, and some others did, too.
usually, colour negative film contains a layer that you don't have in B&W material, which may give you problems. that layer contains dye which will be reduced during the bleaching step of the colour process, but not when using B&W developer/fixer. depending on the film, the negatives may look extremely dense. so far i was lucky and my scanner was able to read out useable pictures.

with rodinal, i'd develop in 1+50 for 10-12 minutes @ 20 deg C.

cheers,
sebastian

 

[petronius]

I usually use Rodinal, 1+100, ten agitations at start and then let it stand for one hour. As sebastel said, the negatives are dense, but useable.

 

[valdas]

I recently developed cine film Fuji F500T in Xtol 1+3. The test shot is below. It looks quite B&W...

 

[lynnb]

I've developed 35mm iso200 C41 colour negs in XTOL 1:1 and in Rodinal 1:50. The XTOL results were quite acceptable. Rodinal had more grain, as one would expect.

 

[lynnb]

expired Kodak Gold 400 in Rodinal 1:50, split toning added in LR4

 

[xavoy]

I had no idea this was possible!!

Is this possible with all C41 films? And are the results actually black and white, or still in colour? My head is hurting thinking about how this works. Is the density due to the filters that still remain? (and is it therefor a colour image?) Or does the black and white chemistry somehow dissolve these filters? (the remaining image therefor being black and white?) My head hurts. I obviously don't understand enough about C41, or the chemicals I'm using to develop my traditional black and white film.

 

[lynnb]

Kodak Gold 200 in XTOL 1:1

 

[xavoy]

Nice shots! I quite like the grain and high contrast. I wonder if it would be worth buying a bunch of cheap rolls of c41 and using it instead of Tri-X? (which I soup in rodinal and agitate like crazy, because that's how I like it.)

 

[nongfuspring]

I've done superia 400 and 200 a couple of times in rodinal and D76. Actually works pretty well so long as you scan.

 

[lynnb]

I had no idea this was possible!!

Is this possible with all C41 films? And are the results actually black and white, or still in colour? My head is hurting thinking about how this works. Is the density due to the filters that still remain? (and is it therefor a colour image?) Or does the black and white chemistry somehow dissolve these filters? (the remaining image therefor being black and white?) My head hurts. I obviously don't understand enough about C41, or the chemicals I'm using to develop my traditional black and white film.

Look up "cross processing". In my experience the resulting neg is bw (no colour information) however the colour mask remains (i.e. the neg is usually an orange colour).

I ask charity stores if I can remove the film from cameras they are selling. Usually they agree, so you get some free film of unknown vintage. Usually it's C41 and often partly exposed. I use the film to test out cameras I find in the same charity stores. Since I have bw chemicals anyway, the cost is minimal.

 

[nongfuspring]

Is this possible with all C41 films? And are the results actually black and white, or still in colour?

I've only tried with cheap consumer film but I would assume that you'd be able to pull some sort of image out of most C41 rolls. It's more or less monochrome at the end, my negatives have generally looked sort of brownish/purplish. The dyes don't really wash away at the end so the negatives look quite opaque, it requires a fair amount of photoshopping to make them look any good.

 

[xavoy]

Thanks for the info guys. I can't believe this has passed me by. On eBay (International) you can buy ten rolls of 400 C41 for as little as $40AUD including shipping. This is much cheaper than I can find Tri-X. The extra computer time in Photoshop isn't appealing tho.

 

[joeswe]

I've only tried with cheap consumer film but I would assume that you'd be able to pull some sort of image out of most C41 rolls. It's more or less monochrome at the end, my negatives have generally looked sort of brownish/purplish. The dyes don't really wash away at the end so the negatives look quite opaque, it requires a fair amount of photoshopping to make them look any good.

In undeveloped CN film, there are no dyes, only colorless couplers. A color developer (or to be precise, the oxidized form of the CD that results from the CD reducing the exposed silver halide to silver) is needed to turn the different color couplers present into the actual dyes. So what happens when you develop with a b&W developer, is that you develop the silver, and the subsequent fix removes the undeveloped silver, nothing else. What you get in the end is a triple layered negative silver image interspersed with the original color coupler substances. At least this is my (amateurish) guess.

 

[leicapixie]

Simply because you can, doesn't mean one should!
Don't use out of date film, too much too go wrong!
Film offered that cheap may have been stored in a metal shed in a desert.
Yes, one can remove the orange layer.
A simple chemical.
One cannot repeat the exact exposure, cameras esp. Leicas are rather costly.
I am a penny pincher but NO MORE "out of date film".
Use B/W film easily available, in most big centers and "on-line".

 

[joeswe]

Thanks for the info guys. I can't believe this has passed me by. On eBay (International) you can buy ten rolls of 400 C41 for as little as $40AUD including shipping. This is much cheaper than I can find Tri-X. The extra computer time in Photoshop isn't appealing tho.

There are relatively affordable, good quality traditional b&w films available like the Kentmere series produced by Ilford or the Ilfopan varieties and others. A much better choice than x-processing C41, IMO.

And consider this: Like many before you, you might discover at some point in time that the ultimate joy in film photography is doing your own wet prints. It would be sad if you would have to admit to yourself that your favorite pics can not be printed optically because they were taken on x-processed CN film ...

 

[MDenton]

https://www.flickr.com/groups/c41inbw/discuss/

 

[batterytypehah!]

This is timely, thanks for the thread, and for the pointer to the flickr group.

I have a lot of 200 speed drugstore film (Made in Japan, i.e. Fuji) in my freezer from when the big chains stopped carrying it and put it on sale. I'm now coming to the conclusion that I'll either get rid of it or use it as B/W because C-41 developing has gotten too expensive.

I'd love to see this thread continue with more examples.

 

[Tom hicks]

any color film , use caffenol 7 to 9 min. this was extar 100

 

[V-12]

Home processing C41 is as easy as developing a conventional B&W film, you use the same equipment and just need to keep an eye on temperatures. So I can't really understand the desire to use B&W chemicals unless it is truly only a one-off experiment, you may just as well side-step the experimentation and get better quality from the negative by using a C41 kit.

V