Can anyone tell me if I can have B&W film processed commercially as positives, ie so I can view the shots as slides? I gave away darkroom work a few years ago because I couldn't devote enough time to it, but I really enjoyed taking B&W shots. What would be the best films to use? What special instructions does the lab require? Any other help or tips would be appreciated.

Frank.

-- Frank Alvaro (franka@acay.com.au), August 24, 1997

Answers

you have a few options with this one. First, Agfa Scala is a B&W slide film. Only a few labs process it at present but the results I have seen are excellent. Second, try TMax 100 with special processing & you will get good results. Good luck.

-- Dan Smith (shooter@brigham.net), August 24, 1997.

You can develop most b&w negatives as slide. There is a process for reversing films. The procedure consist of six main steps: 1. First developping (hard) 2. Dissulution of silver. The unexposed silver-haloid stays in gelatine. 3. Exposure of left silver-haloid. (~60 sec. under 60W with taked down tank top. 4. Second developping. The full developping of exposed silver-haloid. 5. Fix.

There are several recipes for this procedures. I can write they for ask.

-- Zoltan Zentai (zezo@freemail.c3.hu), December 30, 1998.

I have some old (>10 years) text from a BJP annual, some from Ilford and an article from Photo Technique (UK, now defunct). All involve develop, bleach, clear, re-expose, re-develop, stop and fix. If you care to contact me with your address for copies. At the moment when time allows I'm trying to computerise all this old data, when thats done I could email the stuff but who knows when that'll be.

-- Mike Callaghan (cymage@netlink.com.au), January 27, 1999.

I recently started experimenting with developing B&W slides. I collected a number of articles - books, magazines and from the www, and read them. They were all very similar, and I pieced together a process which worked well for me. It can be found on my home page at www.mjd.u-net.com Something which isn't mentioned there is using paper developer (eg. ilford multigrade) instead of the recipe developer. That is something I intend to investigate eventually.

-- Mike Downey (mike@mjd.u-net.com), February 07, 1999.

Further to your query one of the answers is to try Multigrade developer, I've yet to try this but beware that it is formulated for use with developer incorporated papers. A better trial would be to use Bromophen.

-- Mike Callaghan (cymage@netlink.com.au), February 08, 1999.