Desnitometer recommendations?

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gdi

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I am starting to use some oddball films and I think I need to dial them in with my process. Can anyone give me a recommendation on a decent densitometer for multiple film formats (B&W). I see a lot of xrite 301s on ebay - but i think I need to make sure it comes with a calibration sheet,right?

I want to, of course spend as little as possible - so I appreciate any constructive advice you may offer.
 
Step wedge and prints. Find ISO that separates two darkest tones and development time that separates white and near white.

Works with any film, any format. Beside to allow for bellows extension factor, .5 stop for 35mm, 1 stop for 4x5. Roll film somewhere in-between.

My method takes into account enlarger and enlarging lens differences. Not to scientific standards, but works for me for 50 years.
 
I'm going to suggest having a (very short) read here. It's Paul Wainwright's pdf about calibrating film without a densitometer and I think it elaborates a little bit on what Ronald M suggested. It's quite easy with sheet film. You may still want to go the route of having a densitometer if you don't shoot sheet film or perhaps want get into the BTZS stuff but I've been using this method for all my testing with Pyro developers, which is what I mainly use now, and it works very well. I have access to a densitometer at my school but no longer choose to use it. I wish you much luck in all your testing and shooting. Cheers.
 
If you own a spotmeter, you can use it as a densitometer. If I remember correctly, each 1/3 stop represents .10 density units.

I have a Gossen Ultra-Pro handheld meter. It has a built in densitometer mode that reads density directly if you use the enlarging attachment or fiber optic probe on it.
 
All the Epson flatbed scanners I tested were more precise and accurate densitometers than any film-era densitometers. Having a step wedge for calibration and an understanding of how to analyse the data are important.

Marty
 
It is rather unlikely that you really want a densitometer. Zone system beginners often believe they do, as they are referred to in books that are older than the scanner era. But that is merely due to nothing better being available back then. As a matter of fact, a densitometer essentially is a manual scanner with one very large solitary pixel. If you want to test your processing and exposure to house standards, any scanner will do better (working on the full film size in one go, with spot sizes small enough to work on actual subjects rather than test strips only).

If you want to test to absolute standards, a recently calibrated densitometer is the way to go - but for that you would depend on test materials that are unobtainable these days (there would be a tiny niche for pro densitometer use if you want it for colour, but are no factory pre-exposed black and white test strips any more, except for X-ray film, which has completely different parameters).

Pro densitometers are dirt cheap, having once been a common industry appliance, and unless you run into something for very opaque materials (they were also used to test fabrics or paper), all will do. Get one for which there are comprehensible calibration instructions online, and which uses a lamp that is still obtainable!
 
Wow, thanks for all the info! Yes, I had assumed I needed a densitometer for reasonable results, but I will have a spot meter in the next couple of days and an Epson scanner (750). It seems the scanner may be the best way to go and I'll try to find some info online to guide me.

And, on Chris's suggestion, I'll keep my eye out for a Gossen Ultra Pro which seems to be a pretty simple approach.
 
The OP is in the US. The control strips are $87.99 for a 100' roll at Freestyle, which is 72 strips. That's $1.22/strip. To me that's cheap for very precise process control.

Marty
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
If you own a spotmeter, you can use it as a densitometer. If I remember correctly, each 1/3 stop represents .10 density units.

I have a Gossen Ultra-Pro handheld meter. It has a built in densitometer mode that reads density directly if you use the enlarging attachment or fiber optic probe on it.
Click to expand...

Chris - I may have found an Ultra Pro, and I already have either an enlarging attachment or the repro attachment (I think it is the enlarger attachment - it is hard to tell the difference and it is not labeled) I have read it is the repro attachment that is needed - which attachment do you use?

Thanks
 
Freakscene said:
The OP is in the US. The control strips are $87.99 for a 100' roll at Freestyle, which is 72 strips. That's $1.22/strip. To me that's cheap for very precise process control.

Marty
Click to expand...

Well, Ilford's pricing policy is a odd - hereabouts it is around 3€/strip, that is, three times your price. Back when this was a regular item, the roll used to be a little less than 60DM - about 1/4 of the current price...
 
gdi said:
Chris - I may have found an Ultra Pro, and I already have either an enlarging attachment or the repro attachment (I think it is the enlarger attachment - it is hard to tell the difference and it is not labeled) I have read it is the repro attachment that is needed - which attachment do you use?

Thanks
Click to expand...


Either should work fine. The idea is that you need to restrict the meter's reading to a small area without stray light getting in. What I'm using is the Fiber Optic Probe, which is hard to find and usually really expensive (over $100) on eBay. I have one because I got lucky and found one for $30 on eBay one day!
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
Either should work fine. The idea is that you need to restrict the meter's reading to a small area without stray light getting in. What I'm using is the Fiber Optic Probe, which is hard to find and usually really expensive (over $100) on eBay. I have one because I got lucky and found one for $30 on eBay one day!
Click to expand...

Thanks, I am keeping my eye out for the probe, in the meantime I'll use the enlarger attachment.

I ordered a Stouffers step wedge as a baseline, so I'l pretty close to being able to experiment, but I'll probably have need for a bit more advice.
 
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