Okay, I understand that I must have darkness. I do my printing at school right now. My house is not finished being built and so therefore I cannot put together my darkroom (which is in a number of boxes at the time and has never been assembled yet) Anyway I think my professor will let me use the color darkroom. But I don't know if I can bring the black and white chemicals in there. How can I get around this. I really want to try it. There are two large darkrooms in our lab and three little black and white ones and two more small color ones. Do you think I could get my owm bulb and use one of the small b&w ones to try this? That is my own color bulb. and use it in the lamp for the b&W one??? Am I even making myself understandable? Thanks.

-- martha goldsmith (oscar@unidial.com), October 03, 1999

Answers

Hi Martha, I may be completely wrong having never used Panalure but I thought you exposed it in the same way as you would a B&W negative except not using any safelight at all, ie. you must have complete darkness when the paper is out of the protctive envelope. This just means you need to line up your easel correctly, turn safelight off, pull out a sheet of paper and place in easel, make exposure (probably a test strip for starters) and then place the paper in your developer/stop bath/fixer as per usual. Fine tune the exposure time and print your masterpiece. :)

-- Nigel Smith (nlandgl@eisa.net.au), October 04, 1999.

oops, forgot a bit...

I think you should be able to use one of the B&W darkrooms as it is, just remember to turn off the safelight as well.

Cheers, Nige

-- Nigel Smith (nlandgl@eisa.net.au), October 04, 1999.

I have used Panalure, and Nigel is correct, Panalure is processed just like normal blue-sensitive black and white paper. The trick is you have to do everything in total darkness. If you're sharing a darkroom, the other users might not like working with no safelight. You'll either need an audio timer (metronome, radio tuned to WWV, etc.) or one with luminous hands - these are dim enough to not fog your paper.

I don't understand your question about color bulbs. If you mean the lamp in the enlarger, you shouldn't need to change it at all. If you mean safelight bulb, you use none.

It sounds like one of the small B/W darkrooms is your best bet.

-- mike rosenlof (mike_rosenlof@yahoo.com), October 25, 1999.

Mike and Nigel are right. Treat the Panalure paper just as you would with any other B+W paper BUT remember that you must operate in complete darkness. Panalure can see the entire visible spectrum of light and even a "safelight" will fog it. Have fun!~ Still, it's better than printing on multigrade paper with a #4 filter!

-- shawn boyle (shawn6@ids.net), November 09, 1999.

I am also interested in using Panalure to make b&w prints of some color negs. I called Kodak, and was told that total darkness wasn't absolutely necessary, but preferred. Now I'm confused--can Iuse an amber safelight or not? I'm not sure. The people who have used Panalure all say total darkness, but Kodak technical assistance says no. Like you I am working in a shared darkroom (b&w) where other people don't appreciate even short periods of total darkness.

-- sara gann (sgann@ifc.org), February 22, 2000.

Sara, here's a Panalure data sheet on Kodak's website.

http://kodak.com/global/en/professional/support/techPubs/g27/g27.shtml #003

They say you can use a #13 filter, which is the same one generally suggested, IF NECESSARY, for color printing. However, this will put out such a small amount of light that you might just prefer to save a couple dollars and work in the dark.

-- Bill C (bcarriel@cpicorp.com), February 22, 2000.