What can you do - while taking a photo using film - to maximize contrast in black and white?

I'm using black-and-white film in an Olympus omPC with a maximum shutter speed of 1/1000 ... Currently using 400 speed film. Suggestions on film brands, speeds, filters, or anything else appreciated.|||There are several ways:





1) Increase your development time. If you are not developing the film yourself you can have your lab "push" it. You might start with a 1/2 to 1 stop push and adjust to get the effect you want.





2) Print the photograph on a higher contrast paper. If you are not printing yourself you can ask the lab to print for higher contrast. You will need to use a professional lab, not an instant print lab.





3) Use a high contrast film like Kodak Technical Pan film.





4) You may in some cases be able to adjust your contrast using color filters with black and white film. The process is too complicated to explain here but you can read about it a photography book. It will require some practice to get it to work well.





5) Transfer your film negatives into digital format and use an image editing application like Photoshop. You can adjust contrast with tools like Levels, Brightness/Contrast, or Curves.|||well on a computer you can use any simple program to minimize brightnes making the black and white more outstanding|||I would try over-exposing the subject on purpose using extra lighting.|||Don't make any changes while taking the picture. Take it the best way you can. Then you can print it on a high contrast photo paper or scan it to your computer and using Adobe Photoshop Version from 5.5 to CS (Any) contrast it the way you want it to print.|||Use film ilford sfx 200 and experiment with it|||Great answer from jwilliams1454 - One or a combination of any of these methods will result in high contrast prints. My own additions:





Some other possibilities:





Bright contrasty scenes will obviously produce high contrast results. Shooting in direct sunlight with lots of shadows will do it regardless of film, processing, and filters, but the danger of overxposure is there - make sure you bracket.





Shooting with high speed film apparently produces more high contrast results, but I have very limited experience with this. Shooting with high speed film (1600, 3200) will invariably bring about grainier images, but it may be an effect you like.





And this is what filters (filters in photo enlargers) are for in black and white printing... to give different contrast results. Try printing with a 3 1/2 filter. If you want to go beyond that (4, 4 1/2, 5), you're going to have to adjust the paper's exposure time. Books have said to double the exposure time once you move to a 4 (and up) filter, but I found, working with ilford film, chemicals, paper and filters, that an adjustment of 1.5 did the trick. If my exposure time was 8s, I changed it to 12s.





Note: if you wish to develop high contrast in the digital darkroom, I suggest skipping brightness and contrast controls altogether and let the levels and curves adjustment layers be your friends. Learn how to mask your layers as well. My best results come when adjusting the levels of individual sections of the image at different quantities, using layer masks to keep just what I need. In short, not every part of the image needs the same amount of contrast adjustment.





Happy printing!