Silver halide photographic material and image forming method using the same

摘要

A silver halide photographic material and an image forming method using such material are described, said material comprising a surface latent image forming silver halide emulsion layer unit on a support, and containing a hydrazine compound in at least one of said emulsion layer unit and other constituent layers, said emulsion layer unit being composed of at least two layers, with the silver halide emulsion present in a fine-grained low-sensitivity emulsion layer having a minimum average grain size being not more than 80% of the average grain size of a coarse-grained high-sensitivity silver halide emulsion having the maximum average grain size, and said silver halide photographic material attains a contrast of 10 or more in terms of gamma value when a developer containing at least 0.15 mol/liter of sulfite ions and having a pH of from 9.5 to 12.3 is used.