mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >I am beginning to follow you but I never figured out how to deal with the orange mask of color film, and wouldn't the color be affected unless you dealt with that in some fashion???? Wouldn't it have the cross processed look? Granted it might could be done with altering the filter pack. I still hate printing color. Colour is fine, but only once you spend a lot of time practicing first! Black and white is something you can get straight into.. a reasonable amount of time learning to really see those casts and you'll find it easy as B&W :) As to the cast, there were some interneg films about for copying work that didn't have a cast, those would be the ideal films to shoot with. My experimentation with creating a working mask for an appropriate contrast neg were abandoned long back, and I really can't recall where or how I begun. I'm afraid you'd need to dig deeper for more info sorry >Now black an white with a color neg is another issue and Panalure isn't available any more. Guess you could just use the black inks, and probably should and that should help allow for more splashes ect. Blacks and greys are better than straight blacks, the tonal range matches better - some good ink sets are available for very nice tonal prints. My advice, use a printer with a removable head (Canon) so you can just swap out the head+ink rather than purging and wasting ink between swaps. Price a replacement head first though, you may find a basic 4 colour printer converted to black + grey inks to be cheaper than a replacement print head! >Many of the files were captured with film, scanned for about an open 50 meg file, altered and now I hope to get back to film. Many may be black an white. the more I think about this, the more I am convinced you'd probably be better served trying to get a film recorder! .. or if it's only for a few dozen images, outsourcing it. Last time I went looking on ebay for second hand 4000 ppi / 8000 ppi recorders there were propalettes and lasergraphic models for under $100 (!!) Aside form the personal satisfaction of nutting out how to do it yourself, you might derive more pleasure from spending the money and getting on with making negatives ;) B&W though would still be easy enough to try at home making a contact print sized neg just for fun just a thought Karl
