Originally Posted by
Dan Dozer
So - I've been playing around with a lens that by all rights should have been thrown away long ago. It has big time (and I mean major) balsam separation that covers just about all the lens surface. I've been working with it for creative protrait type of work (I like trying to use weird lens elements for creative looks). Problem is that with the balsam separation (lens is fairly yellow from it) and the fact that this is a pretty old projection lens with no coating, the negs are coming out extremely low in contrast. The density of my normal negs is about 1.1 - 1.2 and those with this lens are coming out at about .25 - .3. Seems if I over expose the negs, I can get the density up to maybe .5, but the negative starts to get somewhat dense when I try that. With that range, I'm very limited on how I can get enough contrast with my prints.
I develop my negs (Ilford Delta 100 and HP5) in PMK Pyro and really don't have much recent experience with other developers out there.
So - I'm looking for ideas (other than N+ development) to get more contrast. Given all this, are there some film/developer types and/or combos that I might try that could give me more contrast than what I'm getting with my PMK Pyro developer? What about using colored filters when making the exposures (I don't even know what color might help with this). Would using pink filters help with portrait type of work since it could render the skin tones a little lighter?
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