Has anyone enlarged a color picure using a black and white enlarger with MG filters

Yup, I've done that, too. You've got to use a much higher-numbered filter than you'd use for a normal b&w negative. The reason is that the orange base mask on color neg film acts like a low-contrast filter (you'll notice that the numbers lower than 2 in your MG filter set are all yellowish colored.

You'll also need to give a much longer exposure than normal. By the time you've added a higher-contrast filter (these are purplish in color) to the orange base cast, you've mixed up a color that's very close to the color of a safelight filter -- so most of the light you shoot through your negative doesn't affect the paper at all!

There used to be a solution to all this: Kodak Panalure, a black-and-white printing paper that was panchromatic (sensitive to all colors of light, not just bluish light like normal printing paper.) Panalure was made specifically for producing b&w prints from color negatives. It was never terribly popular, because it was hard to use -- a regular darkroom safelight would fog it, so you either had to use a color-printing safelight (very dim) or no safelight at all.

But it did make good prints, and it also had a cool trick: You could use colored filters over the enlarger lens to produce the same black-and-white effects as you get using the same colored filters over the camera lens when shooting on b&w film. For example, you could use a red filter to make blue skies darker and clouds whiter, just as if you had shot the scene that way on b&w film in the first place!

Unfortunately, Panalure is now extinct, and with Kodak bailing out of the b&w paper business in general, there's no chance of it coming back. I don't know if anyone else makes an equivalent... anybody?
 
Yeah, I've used Panalure, and I've printed on single-grade B&W paper, of course without MG filters. There's something odd-looking about both approaches, I think. I could almost see the color buried in the Panalure print trying to break free! Must have been a psychological effect. "Soft" looking too. The regular B&W paper prints turned out to emphasize the blues and greens of the neg, which in a color print would have been reds & yellows, and looked rather grainy too as I recall. Not very satisfactory.
 
It might be easiest to use a slide duper and direct-positive film (or developing kit) to make b&w negs from your color negs.
 
Yup, been there donde that
I resorted to use a no-filter and a grade 5 filter exposures, sorta split grade and I had OK results... not fine art though
 
Easier to scan it, and then do a "digital negative" and contact print that for a "real b&w print", or just straight inkjet output.

I did try the colour neg on Ilford Multigrade paper, but the results were only so-so. Contrast was very low.
 
Kodak did make a b/w paper for development in RA-4 color print chemistry that made dye-based b/w images from color negatives. Since that is not a true b/w paper, I don't know if it has been discontinued or not.

It may be, as Kin Lau said, the only way today to get a "good" b/w image from a color negative is to scan it, and either make a "digital negative" on your inkjet printer using clear film, to the size you wish the final image to be, (for contact printing), or to just make a good print on your inkjet printer, after desaturating the scan in Photoshop. I am relatively happy with my b/w prints from my Epson Ultrachrome printer, using the Imageprint RIP. I like them better than Resin Coated b/w paper, but not quite as well as double weight silver rich b/w paper for darkroom printing.

I have been quite pleased with the results I am getting from removing the color component of scans of color negs and transparencies, and printing Inkjet b/w prints.

If you choose to make b/w prints on graded, or multigrade b/w paper from color negs, you will find that the tonal values are distorted, even if you get enough contrast. You will also find that the grain is exaggerated.
 
Guys,

read carefully, I think everybody misunderstood the question: As I understand it, Gustavo wants to make a COLOR picture from a COLOR neg, but without a COLOR enlarger or filters, since he only has B&W multigrade filters...
While I have not tried it, I don't think it can be done, as with MG filters you have no control at all over cyan, and virtually none over yellow or magenta casts. But you can get color filters that will work with your B&W enlarger, just like the MG filters for B&W.
As for enlarging color negs onto B&W paper, I agree with most of what was said - it can be done, but results are not very good (grainy, weird tobnal values, hard to get enough contrast), and Panalure as well as the Forte panchromatic B&W paper are not available any more - I'd go the digital route for that.

Roman
 
Roman, I think you're right. The answer however, is still "don't bother" :)
 
I have printed color photos from color negatives on a b/w enlarger with a filter drawer. You should be able to find a set of acetate CC (color compensating) filters. Normally you only filter the yellow and magenta, and the cyan is your base. MG Filters, or Kodak Polycontrast filters will not work, as they do not have the correct color values. You need a set of CC (color compensating) filters 3x3inch or so, in different strengths so you can mix and match them until you get the correct balance,...be prepared for many many test prints. and then you will only have the balance for one type of color negative film. Each brand and speed of color negative film balances at a different filter pack.
 
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