which films do you prefer? which has best contrast?

[thelazerviking]

there is a lot of iron around here, there's actually a part of my town that's named ironia. what does iron do?

 

[thelazerviking]

oh and thanks for all the help guys. i really learn a lot from these types of things. i love technical details

 

[motcon]

Compare Kodachrome 25 with Ektachrome 400.

he was talking b/w film O.0

 

[motcon]

Shadow problems? You may want to set your iso to 320

Distilled water: a very good idea if you have hard water, high iron content etc (as Ann said)

Agitation: try to stick exactly to the developer instructions. More agitation will give you higher contrast...but be careful. If you have to do a lot more, then something else is wrong.

Temperature: Higher temps will also increase contrast. Again stick as closely as possible to the instructions.

precisely where you want to start; at the point of exposure. if your shadows do lack detail, then you should shoot at a lower ei (320 as suggested). best thing to do would be to photograph one subject at 400, then one stop over, then one stop under. find the neg that works for you. if you are metering in matrix, however; you will always be plagued by something. try the simple change of ei first.

and don't change anything else when you do the tests. you need to control the process. limit the variables, otherwise; when you do produce negs that you like, you won't be sure which part of the process actually did the 'trick' and that prohibits you from further experimentation.

as for distilled water, there are more reasons than iron content to justify its use. it's cheap. don't risk your negs.