Kodak make a paper specially designed for this purpose. The paper is called Panalure. Panalure is a panchromatic paper. This means it is sensitive to all wavelengths of light so you cannot use a safelight. You must work in complete darkness when the paper is out of the packet. The paper is developed in standard b&w chemistry and is the easiest way to print colour negatives to B&W paper.
It is possible to make prints from colour negatives simply by using multigrade paper. Keep in mind that the creative processes involved in taking a colour picture are different to those involved in taking a black and white picture. In black and white photography elements of composition include texture, form and tone. A major compositional tool in colour photography is colour! A great colour photograph won't necessarily make a great black and white photograph.
The colour negatives have an orange film base incorporated into the film. In the darkrooms, you may have noticed that we use a yellow-brown safelight on multigrade paper. The orange mask on the negative is similar in colour to the safelights and hence won't expose an image on the paper in a short time. If you do give sufficient exposure to form an image, I have found the images to be much too low in contrast. First, try a straight print before attempting the procedure below. If you have a high contrast negative, it may print directly without colour correction.
To get around the low contrast problem you can use cyan filters to subtract some of the orange from the mask. Cyan is the subtractive colour - opposite on the colour wheel to red. On a light box, put down a b&w negative beside your colour negative. Slowly add cyan filters until the negative appears as close to neutral grey as possible.
On the enlarger use your cyan filtration plus use a higher contrast multigrade filter 3.5. Make your next print.
Look at the print and see if addition of any other colour filtration can benefit the image.
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Cyan | Magenta | Yellow |
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Red | Green | Blue |
From this point it is a matter of experimentation to get a good print from a colour negative.
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Joseph A. Cali |