View Full Version : Cross-Processing C-41 in B&W Chemistry

19-Sep-2010, 19:10
Ever wonder what would happen if you cross-processed a color negative in B&W chemistry? Well, here are the results.



Toyo-field 45AX, 150mm Lens, Fuji 160S color negative film developed in Xtol 1:1 for 9.75 minutes @ 68F.

19-Sep-2010, 20:26
Looks good Tom, I'da thought that the bleach step was needed to remove the unneeded dyes/silver.
Wonder what it would look like on color paper.

20-Sep-2010, 05:11
I have wondered exactly that because I am staring at a roll of NPC160 that probably does not have anything on it that would merit driving across town twice and paying big bucks to have it processed. Can you please explain how you processed it?

20-Sep-2010, 06:18

Is that printed normally? Seem a very good picture and negative. Why it is not widely used? Any trick? Normal stop, fix and photoflo?!

20-Sep-2010, 06:37
Thanks David. Except for the dark color of the water in the pool (it was a light blue) they do look good!

DBG88 and aduncansun: They were processed in a Jobo 3010 with eight other sheets of TMax 100 using the normal B&W chemistry and steps.


20-Sep-2010, 10:15
How did the negatives look? Was the orange mask still there? Are the negatives as high-contrast as your images above?

20-Sep-2010, 15:38
The negatives looked good domaz. The orange mask is there but it is a darker orange than a C-41 negative. The buildings, etc were dark but readidly apparent thru the mask and looked good. The above was readidily scanned with an epson 3200 with slight adjustments made to the lighting and the edges were then sharpened in PS.

One thing that's puzzling me. The C-41 developer only takes 3.25 minutes to develope a C-41 negative and I processed these in Xtol for 9.75 minutes - 3 times longer. I'm thinking of substiting in the future the color developer with Xtol and see what results.

David suggestion of printing them on color (and B&W) paper is also a good idea.


20-Sep-2010, 15:46
I just remembered, I processed the above at 68F and C-41 at 100.4F which probably explains the time.