I'm planning on taking many, many rolls of color print film this Christmas for other family members (that's why it's not going to be B&W). I anticipate only getting a few prints off each roll, so I figure I'll just have the negs developed and make contact sheets in B&W to see which ones we want as keepers. I've never done this before but I've heard it is done. I'm sure some of the tonal scale will be weird, but all I want is a nice clear view of the composition, expressions, etc. Any easy tricks to make the contact prints look more "accurate"? Thanks for any help.

-- John Kilmer (tcompton@citlink.net), December 17, 2000

Answers

Kodak makes a special paper that is spectrally balanced for making black-and-white prints from color negatives. It is called Panalure and requires handling in total darkness as would a color paper. The tonalities from Panalure are quite natural and one can use cc filters, or a dichroic head to alter the tones. Prints from color negatives on regular black-and-white paper are possible, but the tones will be "distorted" due to the blue or blue/green only sensitivity of the paper (i.e. the reds will print black and the blues, including the sky, too light, similar to prints from older orthochromatic or blue-sensitive films). Panalure is your best bet IMHO. It is processed conventionally. Hope this helps. ;^D)

-- Doremus Scudder (ScudderLandreth@compuserve.com), December 18, 2000.

Thanks, Doremus. That's about everything I need to know.

-- John Kilmer (tcompton@citlink.net), December 19, 2000.

Why don't you just take it ta a lab and ask for an index print? It would probably end up costing the same. Just an idea.

-- Allen (akjh@hotmail.com), January 03, 2001.