Does anybody know of a currently available direct positive black and white printing paper. A friend of mine wants to make B&W prints from slides. So do I.

~mason

-- Mason Resnick (mresnick@idt.net), October 10, 1997

Answers

No, I don't know of one, and I doubt that it exists. I think all photographics materials are "negative", the positive effect is achieved by special processing: develop, bleach, expose to light (or do the same chemically), redevelop, fix.

I suppose you could try this with B&W paper. Of couse, the usual way is to photograph the slide on to B&W film.

-- Alan Gibson (gibson.al@mail.dec.com), October 11, 1997.

The procedure that I have used successfully is to make a print of the slide on single weight paper with my enlarger. This print is a paper negative which is used to make a positive print. The positive print is made by contact printing with my enlarger light and a contact printing frame. The advantqage of this process is that you can use your existing equipment and photo chemicals and papers, and have two steps in which to control contrast in the final print. This is important in printing from a slide since the contrast of the slide is much greater that the range a paper can accomodate. By dodging and burning in the image on the paper negative. one can tame this beast to a great extent.

-- Eilert Anders (Eilert@dav.com), November 12, 1997.

B&W prints from color slides

Years ago I read that Panalure Paper, (Kodak of course), was the paper of choice for doing this printing. I tried it for a short while and was never satisfied with the results. Contrast was way off, (in my eyes. Perhaps I didn't follow instructions), and there was much grain. I developed normally and this may have been the problem. Sorry I can't help more.

-- H. David Huffman (craptalk@ix.netcom.com), May 12, 1999.

i have had much

-- (rphoto@aol.net), February 08, 1998.

Here is an old receipe, still working with modern papers, to print slides on b&w papers. The receipe comes from a book written by the Lumihre company (you know, the Lumihre brothers who invented cinema). 1) Develop your print fully 2) Rinse the print 3) Bleach 10 min. in the following bath : 1 litre of water, 2 g of potassium permanganate and 10 cc of 660 Sulfuric Acid 4) Put the print in a 2% bath of sodium bisulfite 5) Rinse 6) Expose to light, during 30 sec. 7) Put back the print in the first developer 8) After a full redevelopment, wash in water (you don't need to fix the paper)

-- Philippe Bachelier (phbach@infonie.fr), February 19, 1998.

I have done the paper negative approach but was not entirely happy with the results. You tend to lose detail and the final positive print is not as shape as I like. Instead, I make a B&W negative using a slide duplicator. I use a ROKUNAR zoom slide duplicator (from B & H). I use T-Max 100 and this seems to work well. I have heard that Techpan is also ood for making duplicates but I have not tried it myself. I make at least 2-3 exposures, 2-3 stops more than what your light meter indicates. Trust your own eyes for focusing For my light source I use a halogen floodlight from any hardware or building supply store. You will have to experiment with the light to slide distance. The negatives can be a bit contrasty, but you can always control that VC papers and filters.

-- Mei Leng Lau (bohl-lau@erols.com), November 18, 1998.

Mason, For a long time I went the internegative route. Instead of carrying two cameras, one with B&W, the other with color, I did all my taking using slide film. This was so even when I expected to do B&W prints. In the enlarger, I made internegatives on 4x5 sheet film. This took some experimenting for exposure, which was very short. I printed from the internegs. It also permitted some control of the image using color filters. That was a very interesting capability but took lots of practice. Now I have no darkroom so that approach is out. I currently do some camera dupes of slides using XP2 and T400CN. They seem to work, I can do some of the same filtering, but contrast control is less accurate.

-- Richard Newman (rnewman@snip.net), May 12, 1999.