Tri-X 400

Tri-X 400 is the stock people mean when they ask for a grainy black and white photograph. Kodak sold it in 35mm from 1954, and picture desks ran it because it was fast enough to hand hold indoors and tough enough to push at night.

The grain is cubic silver, not tabular, so every clump has a hard edge. That hard edge reads as sharpness, which is why a Tri-X frame can look grainy and crisp at the same time. No other stock on this list does both.

Name the stock and the grain in one clause. Ask for coarse sharp edged grain across the whole frame, not grain in the shadows only. Grain in the shadows only is what a model gives you by default, and it reads as digital noise.

Tri-X puts texture into skin. Pores, stubble and fine lines stay visible, and the shadow side of a face falls to black quickly because the contrast is high. Say skin in mid grey with texture held if you want a face rather than a mask.

A blue sky comes back pale grey and close to white, because the film is more sensitive to blue than the eye is. Ask for a yellow filter to bring the sky to mid grey, or a red filter for a near black sky with white clouds. Then say pushed one stop or pushed to 1600 for bigger grain and harder contrast.

Use it for street work, reportage, concerts, rain, night pavements and anything where the grain is doing part of the telling. It is also the right answer when the picture has to look like a photograph from the 1960s or the 1970s.

Leave it alone for product work, for a calm landscape and for any picture where the skin has to look clean. FP4 Plus or T-Max 100 does that job, and Tri-X will fight you the whole way.

Cinema publishes Film Grain, Monochrome, Noir and High Contrast as separate entries at /techniques/cinema/. Those are grades. They act on a picture that already exists. A stock acts first: it sets the grain size, the tone curve and the grey that every colour becomes. Name Tri-X 400 when you want the whole chain, and name the cinema entry when you only want the finish.

HP5 Plus is the rival at the same speed. It is flatter, softer in the shadows and a touch smoother in the grain. Tri-X is the harder and crunchier of the two, and Double-X 5222 is the cine cousin at 250 speed with deeper blacks.

Kodak introduced Tri-X in sheet film in 1940 and in 35mm in 1954, and it stayed on press assignment for the next forty years. Photographers rated it at 800 or 1600 and pushed it in D-76, HC-110 or Diafine, which is where the very coarse grain in the night pictures of that era comes from. Kodak reformulated it in 2007 and sells it today as 400TX in 35mm and 120.

The picture comes back clean and modern. Say coarse sharp edged grain across the whole frame, name the stock, and add pushed one stop.

The colour to grey trap catches the sky and the lips. Black and white film records blue as bright and red as dark, so a blue sky prints near white and red lipstick prints near black. Ask for a yellow or a red filter on the sky, and expect a strong mouth to go very dark.