Hopefully a simple question

I am an experienced photographer, practicing for 7 years (im 21) and I need some help. A year or so ago, I spent a day in Chicago shooting pictures all day. I was shooting black and white film from a 35mm Pentax SLR. When I got them developed, the pictures turned out in an almost green toned sepia. Someone was telling me that it is a specific type of film, and another person told me that it was just a mistake in the developing. If someone could get back to me and let me know what is true, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Hi jones and welcome to PR! Just FYI, we have a Help Files board for just this type of question.

To answer your question, it sounds as if you were using C-41 (or 1-hour) black and white film instead of traditional black and white film. And both answers you got were right. The first answer is correct in that this normally would only happen with C-41 B&W film. The second answer is better because C-41 B&W film can be printed without the color cast, as long as the lab knows what they're doing.

The more common C-41 B&W films are Kodak B&W Plus, Kodak T400CN Professional Black & White, and Ilford's XP-2 Super (my personal favorite of the C-41s). Hope that helped!

Danielle

Thanks for getting back to me Mig, it is appreciated. The reason I asked this question is because I am actually trying to recreate the effect of the green toned sepia. If I am trying to do it intentionally, would I purchase some C-41 film and then have it developed as a color roll or as B&W? Or is there a certain type of film that is automatically in a sepia tone? I know a sepia can be easily edited in via computer, but if I can spend less time at a computer and more time in the field, life would be better. Any help would be appreciated.

P.S. Thanks for letting me know about the help forum, in the future, I will submit posts of this manner there instead.

C41 is the process for color negative film. There are some films that are designed to work in this chemestry and give you B&W negatives like the ones Mig mentioned. The results are great with T400CN printed on B&W paper, but finding a lab to do that isn't easy. I had one here but they just switched to a digital mini-lab and the prints are nothing like what they used to be. Kodak has also discontinued this film and has one that replaces it and Portra 400BW. Those two films had different looks, so I'm not to sure about what the new one will look like. Because of the change with the lab I won't use it anymore anyway.

If you like that effect of the color cast, try doing the same thing and seeing if you get the results. Better yet, bring in one of the prints and show them that it's really wrong but you want it anyway. Usually the tinting or toning is done in the printing process, it's not on the film.

Welcome to PR.com - check out viewfinder, we're trying to figure out a date for a Chicago get-together (this fall) if you're interested.

As others have already said, it sounds like you had a C-41 bw film processed. If that's the case, your negatives are indeed black and white, much the same as any "normal" bw film procesed in bw chemistry.

The tones on your prints are simply from the machine printing on color paper with a bw negative as a source. If you had the lab make color prints from ANY bw negative, it's most likely they would have some type of color cast, too.

Because this was a "happy accident", exactly duplicaitng the color may be tricky. The advice to bring one of the prints in as an example (using the same type of film) is probably your best bet...