Thanks for this interesting and accurate post... Speaking of dead nomenclature, we have yet to cover the Weston, GE and GOST standards! Eric Goldstein -- On 9/26/07, Richard Knoppow <dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > I don't want to reiterate my rather long post about > this. ASA is the American Standards Association. This was > renamed the American National Standards Institute, probably > because people can't stand simple names. The ISO is an > international association of national standards groups and > attempts to co-ordinate standards. An ISO standard is also > an ANSI standard. > The DIN, which is the German association for > establishing industrial standards, is also a member of ISO. > The original film speed standard adopted by the ASA in > the United States, in 1943, was a modified version of a > method which had been developed at Kodak and used internally > there for several years. The method was devised by Loyd A. > Jones after many years of research on determining the > _practical_ exposure of film for pictorial use. Jones's > method required measuring intercepts of a double slope and > evidently was not very simple in practice. Jones idea was > that the minimum exposure point should be at a high enough > contrast (or gamma) point on the toe of the film curve to > provide for some shadow detail. His research found that tone > rendition of prints improved until the negative exposure > reached this point but that there was little detectable > change for greater exposure. He chose to determine minimum > exposure because film tends to become more grainy with > density and also to loose some sharpness. > Unfortunately, the original ASA version of this included > a two times safety factor so that negatives were inevitably > too dense thus destroying the purpose of the standard. > In 1958 the ASA reviewed the method for determining > speed. It examined the method used by the DIN at that time. > This was _not_ the original pre-WW-2 DIN method but one > which measured a speed point determined by a minimum density > above gross fog and support density. The ASA conducted tests > of a great many emulsions and found that a fixed multiplier > of this minimum density point would result in practical > aggreement with the speeds determined by the Jones Mimimum > Gradient method but was much easier to measure reliably. The > ASA adopted this system with the fixed factor (about 1.25) > and eliminated the two times safty factor previously applied > to the Jones speeds. The practical result was the doubling > of all published film speeds. > Film speed is still given in both ISO and DIN even > through the two are identical methods because ISO speeds are > stated in an arithmetical series and DIN speeds in a > logrithmetic method. This is to match existing light meter > calculators. > The ISO/DIN method specifies the exposure range and > density range to result from it, thus it specifies the > contrast or gamma of the negatives. The last change in the > standard eliminated the specification of a standard > developer, however the developer must be specified along > with the resulting speed. > If a film is developed using a different developer than > that used for the measurement, or is exposed and developed > to a different contrast index (or gamma) the ISO/DIN speed > no longer applies. However, the ISO/DIN speeds still give at > least a rough estimate of the differences among films. > > --- > Richard Knoppow > Los Angeles, CA, USA > dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > > --- > Rollei List > > - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx > > - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' > in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org > > - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with > 'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org > > - Online, searchable archives are available at > //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list > > --- Rollei List - Post to rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx - Subscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'subscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Unsubscribe at rollei_list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the subject field OR by logging into www.freelists.org - Online, searchable archives are available at //www.freelists.org/archives/rollei_list