densitometer, who, what, where, when and why?

Hello all,how can owning a densitomiter improve your photography?

If you are running a processing lab; or a hardcore lab rat; or a engineer; tools can help with controlling the process. A densitometer is not a chick magnet; wont help one with posing.

In engineering; one can use the densitometer to measure the D of a DlogE curve. One can measure the fog level of a piece of motion picture film or still film; to see if the roll is useable; or is fogged too much. One can figure the real legal asa/iso of your old films; and grunt around too with developers and preflashing. This can be total overkill for the average shooter.

And I could tell you what it is used for in color, but Lex would delete the post.

 

Suffice it to say that it is a very useful tool in c**** photography.

 

Ron Mowrey

You could use one in Zone System work, to determine your EI and your development times. You can use one to linearize your printer if you are printing B&W using inkjets.

 

I'd tell you how, but you didn't ask ;-)

A transmission densitometer measures the amount of light that passes through different parts of a negative. A reflection densitometer measures the amount of light reflected from different parts of a print. Basically, it measures lightness and darkness.

 

The instrument is primarily for the technically inclined darkroom worker. If you are that person, you can use the tool learn how various materials and processes (exposure, film type, paper type, dev time, temp, agitation, dev type, toners, etc.) interact to affect negatives and prints.

 

The overall density of negatives and prints and differences between the lightest and darkest regions are critical elements in how we perceive the final results. For some people, relating the quantative information to perception can be extrodinarliy useful.

 

However, the less technically inclined you are, the less likely you are to benefit from using a densitometer. For some people, it gives a coldly clinical (not to mention confusing) quality to the process. A sufficiently talented darkroom worker can produce high quality negatives and prints without using a densitometer. I use a densitometer all the time. It has been an effective aid in understanding various materials and processes but it surely has not been a substitute for experience and aesthetic judgement.

many labs will read film tests for you if you don't want to pay for a densitometer.

Save your money. Best way to improve your photography is by doing it.

Hogarth,

 

Would you have a suggestion for an inexpensive, used, reflective densitometer for

liniarizing an inkjet quadtone printer?

 

Thanks.

I just LOVE the irony of using an analog densitometer to optimize the output of an ink jet printer!

actually Al........although I agree with you on the normal everyday ink jet printer set up.........Quadtone set ups are in a class by themselves. It might be something worthwhile to listen to.

"<cite>I just LOVE the irony of using an analog densitometer to optimize the output of an ink jet printer!</cite>"

<P>

Nearly all densitometers made in the past decades, save those using a Goldberg wedge (optical), are digital. None of the non-digital densitometers to my knowledge adhere to the ANSI/DIN standards. While Status-M and Status-A might be for photographic applications there is more to densitometry than film--- in fact, photographic film densitometry (not X-Ray) is a niche within the densitometry marketplace. Printers are a very typical application for densitometric analysis and the function of Status-T (U.S.) or Status-E (Europe) wide band spectral responce has moved over from ink in the printing industry to inks from ink-jet and other digital raster output devices. There are many appropriate densitometers and a growing market for calibration of digital output devices. Some printer stations over, at least the past decade, have come even with automatic strip reading solutions. With more and more of these devices its become quite mainstream and a whole new class of more inexpensive devices have been going in to the market following on the tails of the Spectrocam--- which, interestingly, was an outgrowth of the Lici Colorstar development.

"<cite>Hello all,how can owning a densitomiter improve your photography?</cite>"

<P>

Its called "<cite>quality control</cite>". A densitometer can also help in some creative areas BUT its bread-and-butter application in photography is quality control: Making sure that the process steps are within the specifications one has set out--- be it for colour or B&W, for negatives/diapositives or prints.

It's easy to improvise a B&W densitometer from a light meter - look for previous posts. I use it for transmissive measurement, and it's certainly more than accurate enough (this is one with a readout in 1/10ths of a stop). It can probably be rigged for reflective measurement too.

I think one of the reasons that the Ansel Adams books had such an impact on photography was that by studying the Zone System and using a densitometer, it was possible to learn to do B&W photography in a sophisticated way with control over the process from a book.

 

Many people do not live near galleries that show fine B&W prints, and don't really know what the medium is capable of. Even fewer have access to good reference negatives. It takes a lot of trial and error to discover what a good negative or a fine print looks like, if you've never seen one, and if you don't have a teacher who can help you learn to judge negatives by eye.

 

A densitometer takes out a certain amount of the guesswork and makes it possible to write about tonal values in a meaningful way in a book and to learn about photography from a book. It doesn't take away the ability or the necessity of making aesthetic judgments, but it lets you gain control of the process relatively quickly, so that you can train your eye, so that eventually you won't really need a densitometer most of the time.

For an amateur to have a densitometer would be like a good shade tree mechanic having a full blown dynamometer and a bench full of advanced electronic diagnostic gear.

Except today you can buy a densitometer for less then one socket.

Yeah, Art - think how much better that shade-tree mechanic could be if he had a dynamometer to determine whether all the time he spends tinkering around with the car actually makes any differences or improvements?

 

Since we're using automotive analogies now, a densitometer is a real Type-R mod than can improve your camera's performance.

 

An densitometer can really help you determine whether all the time you spend playing around with different developers, films, styles of agitation, or any number of other techniques actually make improvements or are just attemps at voodoo and do not work.

Sorry, meant to say:

 

"Since we're using automotive analogies now, a densitometer is a real Type-R mod that can improve your camera's performance."

We use the densitometer in designing new developers and in the graphics industry to maintain quality control of exposure and measure density from processing.

Densitometry comes into its own in color photography. Status A, M and D are designed with color in mind, the filter sets being used for various films and papers.

 

There are filter sets for negative films, reversal films, and papers. There are sets for B&W and etc.. It is a broad field, but only serves to make all of photography easier to work with if you are a true professional.

 

Go to Ctein's web site www.ctein.com, and look at some of his prints. You will see the neutral scale down the sides or across the bottom. These are there to meter his quality and insure that the job is done right. In a newspaper color section, you see color patches on the edges. They are there to be read as a factor in determining color quality.

 

Sorry Lex. Hope you leave this in.

 

Ron Mowrey

As always I'd prefer to keep the thread's focus on b&w techniques but I recognize that there are some crossovers between b&w and color, especially where equipment is used.

Being in a contrary mood tonight, I'd suggest that having a densitometer rarely improves anybodys photography. If you can't figure out how to find your film speed and how to achieve quality by ring-a-rounds and other methods, the densitometer will just add to the confusion. I'm not suggesting passing one up, should a good deal come around, just that if you have to ask the question, you have a good deal of study and work ahead before you get close to understanding and optimizing your process "by the numbers".

A transmission densitometer is a great tool when you want to spend the least amount of time + energy and money when establishing a film speed for a new film and or a new developer. I can always establish the correct film speed using only one roll of film and can usually determine the correct development time from that same roll of film . At most it takes 1 roll of film to get the film speed and 1 roll to really nail down the development time. There is no faster more accurate way of doing this. I don't enjoy spending time testing materials and the densitometer keeps my testing time down to a minimum. PLUS it is VERY accurate!

Thanks for the input, a densitometer would be a luxury item on my list, for now I will continue working by trial and error. I have the film speeds and development times for the films I use sussed. You can buy quite a lot of film and paper for the price of a 2nd hand densitometer.