MorseBlog

As I started to write my post on Chromogenic film I realized I was digging deeper into the whole subject of printing C41 negatives and the reason why Chromogenic black and white film exists. It just so happens I had finished a couple of rolls of film in my Mamiya 645 Pro.  These rolls violated one of my rules of mixing color and black and white shooting in the same session. The great thing was I had some photos of the same subject taken back-to-back on both black and white film (Ilford HP5+) and color negative (Kodak Portra 400).  Here is the color version.  When I first got into film photography (over 10 years ago!) I preferred reversal (slide film) over color negative film. I had struggled to get good colors with scanned negative film. Eventually I learned enough to know how to get good color correction on color negative scans. After I came back to color negative f...

A while back I was reminded of chromogenic film such as Ilford's XP2 Super and Kodak's BW400CN No longer available) and Fuji Neopan 400CN. These are based on C41 color film principles except that they only have dyes for black rather than Cyan, Magenta and Yellow. They also lack the orange mask layer found in color c41 films. (Kodak retained the orange mask in their version intended to make black and white prints on color paper.) The rest are meant to be printed on black and white paper generally and so can offer C41 benefits with the ability to print on black and white paper.  Printing C41 color negatives on black and white paper can be done however the colors and mask limits the effectiveness of variable contrast filters. Because the film has color in it you get different amounts of contrast filtration inherent in the image negative colors. This ultimately influences the amount of contrast control achievable. Another limitation is that most black an...