mail1 wrote:
I'm not Jim, but I'll give it a go anyway. The trouble with densitometer and the various film stains is that the densitometer and photographic paper do not respond to the light transmitted through the stain in the same way, mainly to differences in spectral response. I do have some experience with this. In my opinion, the best way to figure this out is the following. Get a Stouffer 4x5 stepwedge. Read all of the steps with a densitometer. Make a contact print on your paper. Use and exposure such that you have pure black steps and white steps on the contact sheet. Now if you want to get fancy, you can use a reflection densitometer to read the patches. Anyway, now make a contact exposure with the stepwedge on your film. Develop in the staining developer. Make a contact print with the resulting negative. Compare the two contact strips to evaluate contrast. Read the stained negative with a densitometer, and based on the differences between the stained negative and the step wedge, come up with a function that expresses the stain density's effect on your printing paper. Personally, I'd stop at the comparing contact sheet stage, but to each their own.Jim, I am interested as to why you think densitometers are problematic.
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