Hi, I have set up a darkroom at my house recently and I want to know if I can develop color negatives with my B&W chemicals like D-76. Does anyone know?

-- Joshua Powers (Marvinm92@aol.com), November 16, 1999

Answers

Not sure if this is of help but some years ago when I just started in photography I developed a roll of Ilford XP2 in Rodinal. I don't remember the details but from memory the negatives appeared printable. XP2 is a chromogenic rather than a black and white film, this is as much as I can say on the subject. I know next to nothing about colour, but perhaps the analogy with XP2 is of use.

-- Tim Bolotnikoff (Timothy_Bolotnikoff@justice.qld.gov.au), November 17, 1999.

If you develop colour negative film with B&W chemistry, you'll get B&W negatives.

Similarly with XP2. The negatives will contain silver grain, rather than the dye clouds that XP2 is capable of.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), November 17, 1999.

You'll get black and white negatives, and not very good ones either. You'll have to adjust the time and do tests in order to get good b&w negatives from color film.

Assuming that Joshua was actually asking how to develop color in his home darkroom, that can be done, but you don't use the same chemistry, you use chemicals designed for color processing. Most of which requires very accurate temperatures, so most people use a processor which maintains the temperature within a couple degrees F.

I hope this helps Joshua. --Andy Hughes

-- Andy Hughes (andy@darkroomsource.com), November 17, 1999.