Darkroom printing from Kodak 400CN B&W?

Joined: 11 May 2006 Posts: 62 Location: 70802

First of all, let me say hello. I found this forum the other day when I was doing some research on lith printing. It's nice to see that people online discuss something that I'm into other than Macs.

So, I've been asking around at school (I go to LSU) about this, but I can't quite get a good answer. Has anyone here got any experience trying to print on a darkroom enlarger from Kodak Professional 400CN? I've got a darkroom set up at home, and I plan on doing some printing and experimenting this summer.

If it helps, I'm using a Beseler 23C, Ilford multigrade papers (although I'll be getting some other papers to play around with as the $$$ comes in) and Dektol. I was thinking that I may need to go longer on the higher end filter in order to compensate for the "orangieness" of the C41 negative.

Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 577 Location: Rochester, NY

I have printed traditional black and white prints from Kodak's chromogenic film. It can tend to print a little flatter but--as you mentioned--a simple bump in contrast should do the trick. I would generally start with a 2 1/2 to grade 3 filter with most black and white VC papers using the Kodak filter set. I have a 23C II XL. Hope that helps. Have fun!

Joined: 11 May 2006 Posts: 62 Location: 70802

Well, I printed from one of the negatives last night. The first thing I noticed was that you really have to cook the paper in the enlarger. I generally try to keep my exposure time to an overall of about 10-20 seconds, but with the C-41 negative, I had to go almost a minute! I split filter, so I wound up doing something like 20 with the 0 and 25 with the five, with a ten second burn time for each (I was printing this negative and had to burn in the sides).

The results weren't perfect, but I'm sure I can get it with a little practice.

I also noticed that the grain in this film is _extremely_ fine. So much so that I had a hard time geting it into focus, even with the focuser. I had to just use details in the photo. Is that a characteristic of all C-41 film? I wouldn't be surprised if I could get a 16x20 print out of these things.

Joined: 27 Apr 2005 Posts: 577 Location: Rochester, NY

Don't know what your settings were but you could always open up a stop to shorten your exposure times.

Yes, T400CN is a very fine grained film. The combination of T-GRain and the fact that it is a dye based multi-layered emulsion make for very good image quality.

When using a grain focuser I also find it easier to focuson a good sharp hard edge in the image.

I hope that helps! Have fun!

Joined: 11 May 2006 Posts: 62 Location: 70802

It was open all the way. It could also be that the bulb is getting dim, but I think it's more to do with the orange mask over the negatives. Hopefully I'll be able to work on them some more this week.