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Looking for a different developer for Tri-X

I'd say Xtol if you want a complement to Rodinal. More shadow speed than Rodinal, and finer grain.

D23 gives nicely compressed tones, and fine grain, but leaves some speed on the table.

Also Diafine does strange and beautiful things with Tri-X. For one thing you get good speed, but trade latitude. If you get it exposed right, you will have lovely, expansive tones and very fine (yes fine) grain. But it can also give ugly grain and stacked-up tones. I shoot Tri-X with diafine in my program-exposure XA cameras set on 800 or 1600 because the results are always reasonable. But sometimes when the exposure comes out just right the results are stunning. I have printed some 11x14s from these cameras with barely visible grain and almost hyper sharpness. I wish I could get it to come out like that every time; if you actually meter the light or have a camera with advanced metering it would probably just be a matter of finding the exact EI that works for the light. Also, Diafine must be the cheapest of all developers--my batch is like 2 years old.