Response to The Chemistry Behind Black and White Photography

You may find a partial answer to your question in my article on Mixing Developers at http://unblinkingeye.com. I start with the fundamentals of photographic chemistry. Much of the magic of the photographic process is inherent in the peculiar properties of silver halide crystals and the imperfections (i.e., "sensitivity centers") inherent in them. The imperfections are essentially silver ions (atoms of silver lacking an electron) that are positively charged. When photons strike the silver halide molecules, the energy level of various electrons are raised and they flow to the positively charged silver ions and form atoms of pure silver, which are known as latent image specks. These latent image specks act as "seeds" which allow the developing agent to begin the process of reducing the halides to pure silver. There is an excellent reference that I base much of my information on: George T. Eaton's "Photographic Chemistry" (Morgan & Morgan, 1957).

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