Some developers yield more speed than others, but lengthening the time
of development simply increases the contrast. In many low-light
situations, this actually makes the photos worse.

There is no remedy for underexposure, though, as I said, some
developers do give a bit more speed than others. We're talking 1/3 to
1/2 stop at most.

Are you processing the film yourself?

One thing that can help is to use a phenidone based developer
such as Ilford Microphen. Microphen is supposed to give a small speed
increase compared to development in D-76 to the same contrast.
The speed increase isn't huge, maybe half a stop, but it appears
to be real. Microphen is also noticeably grainier than D-76.

Kodak Xtol appears to give a small speed increase over D-76
(I think generally a little less than Microphen) and has
slightly finer grain than D-76. This is remarkable because
until fairly recently D-76 was supposed to have the best
speed/grain trade-off.

Peter.

Please ignore the troll.

You are going to have to define "performance".  There are
lots of ways to get thicker negatives, denser highlights
and more grain and fog.

You may see an effective speed increase in going from
Microdol-X f.s. to Xtol.  Personally, I don't see it.
IMO M-X produces thin negatives with good highlight
detail, in opposition to HC-110, say.

I find increasing development time brings up little shadow
detail in trade for larger grain and less highlight
detail.

The technique of underexposing and overdeveloping is used
to increase negative contrast for flat subjects.  Now, if
your pics are of typical English weather -- drizzle, fog and
low cloud cover interrupted by periods of rain -- then bumping
development would be appropriate as there are no shadows and
there are no highlights.  Grain will still increase.  Me, I
just resign myself to the pic looking like the scene and
maybe go to a harder grade of paper.

Most problematic low-light pictures are taken indoors with
artificial light and so contrast is a real problem.  When
taking pics at a show the thing to do is _overexpose_ and
_underdevelop_.  Don't push.

If there were then Jessops would be selling the film with
400 stamped on the carton and recommend longer developing
times.  And then we are right back to where we started.

The manufacturer is already pushing the film for all it's
worth.  After all, they get money for ASA.

A lot of mini-labs (I've worked for three) use one time and temperature for
all their black and white film processing and one developer (if they process
black and white at all!).  I was the first lab tech they ever had that
separated film by type and adjusted process times using the front panel
controls on their Photo-Therm.  The first question the boss asked me was why
I had to make so many runs with his machine.  Until then, everything was
processed for the TMax 400 time in TMax developer, suspect that most
"classic" ISO 100-200 films require significantly less development, ergo
contrasty negatives.  BTW, my boss figured out after a few days that his
remake ratio went way down after I started optimizing  process times and
customer satisfaction went way up, which was fine until his customers
started requesting that only I process their films and they didn't want him
to do it anymore (can you say unemployment?).

--
darkroommike

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Could you describe the subject matter or put a few pics on a web site.