Black/White & Green developer makes an unpleasant grain

loccdor · Tuesday at 2:53 PM

What do you call this type of grain from Black/White & Green on Tri-X? "Sandy"?

The grain on Tri-X from HC-110 1+31 looks better.

What do you think? I try alternatives but I keep coming back to HC-110.

Black/White & Green is not a very popular developer, and I wanted to like it. Maybe it should be used for larger formats.

Pioneer · Tuesday at 3:37 PM

HC-110 is very versatile and I use it frequently. But I also like D-23 for Tri-X and I don't think I have seen that type of grain before from any of the developers I have used with Tri-X. Tri-X usually works with just about anything. What was your development time?

loccdor · Tuesday at 3:41 PM

1+49 15 minutes. 2 minutes over what they recommend, but still. I was seeing a pretty harsh grain in other's photos too.

For example this is someone else doing it at the recommended 13 minutes.

Andrew O'Neill · Tuesday at 3:50 PM

I did a video about a year ago, comparing BW&Green with PC-TEA. They both contain the same ingredients, so I was thinking that the Green stuff was just PC-TEA. They rendered tones the same but BW&Green was much grainier than PC-TEA, with slightly better acutance.

Don_ih · Tuesday at 4:45 PM

Looks a bit like FX37.

loccdor · 2025-12-10T07:09:36-0500

Andrew O'Neill said:
I did a video about a year ago, comparing BW&Green with PC-TEA. They both contain the same ingredients, so I was thinking that the Green stuff was just PC-TEA. They rendered tones the same but BW&Green was much grainier than PC-TEA, with slightly better acutance.

Thanks Andy, I remember seeing that video but forgot your mention of the graininess.

Black/White & Green developer makes an unpleasant grain

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