Best way to bring out contrast??

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Hi there, I took some black and white pics in England a couple years back and the pics came out great. The only problem is that there wasnt much of a contrast between the black and the white. The whites seemed kind of grey. I used black and white film and had the pictures developed at a local shop that specializes in black and white photography.

Any suggestions???

Richard

-- Richard (rlstorfer@earthlink.net), March 09, 2002

Answers

Have the negatives printed on contrastier paper. I'm surprised that a shop specializing in b&w didn't do that in the first place. I doubt that your negatives are so flat that no paper can compensate.

-- Keith Nichols (knichols1@mindspring.com), March 10, 2002.

If it were a cloudy day, you will want to push process the film by about 10%. This will boost the highlights and give a stronger gradation If it were a sunny day, the processing time was probably not enough causing a "pulled effect" there by having the highlights mushy causing the lower contrast. When film is processed, the shadows develop to a point and then the highlights keep being processed until the stop bath. With this in mind, a push on a cloudy day will give a punchier negative but a push on a sunny day can render your highlights bullet proof and unprintable. Hope this helps. Cheers, Scott

-- Scott Walton (walton@ll.mit.edu), March 11, 2002.

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