Radiographic film material exhibiting increased covering power and “colder” blue-black image tone

Abstract

A radiographic film material has been provided, comprising a transparent film support having first and second major surfaces coated, apart from a subbing layer and, optionally, a non-light-sensitive hydrophilic layer thereupon, with at least one light-sensitive silver halide emulsion layer overcoated with a protective antistress layer, said emulsion layer(s) having chemically and spectrally sensitized {111} tabular hexagonal core-shell emulsion grains or crystals in an amount of at least 50% of the total projective grain surface of all grains, said grains being composed of a silver bromide core and a silver bromoiodide shell having an average amount over the whole crystal volume of more than 90 mole % of silver bromide, said grains further having a mean equivalent volume diameter of from 0.3 &mgr;m up to 1.0 &mgr;m and an average grain thickness of less than 0.30 &mgr;m, wherein said film material is coated with a total amount of silver, expressed as an equivalent amount of silver nitrate of less than 7 g/m2, characterized in that all silver iodide is present in an outermost shell corresponding with at most 20% of all silver halide precipitated in order to provide silver iodide to be present in the whole grain volume of said tabular grains in an average amount of less than 1 mole % of iodide, based on silver and in that said protective antistress layer, said non-light-sensitive hydrophilic layer or both said protective antistress layer and said non-light-sensitive hydrophilic layer comprise a mercapto-tetrazole compound as in general formula (I), presented in the claims and in the detailed description, said compound being present in high amounts of at least 0.5 mmole per mole of silver halide coated.