Being able to measure film density makes calibrating exposure and development fairly easy. Densitometers, unfortunately, cost around $800 and most photographers have better uses for that much money.

Federal regulations require hospitals and radiology centers that perform mammograms to have a rigorous quality control process that includes densitometry readings of the x-ray films, so they all have densitometers.

If you know anyone who works in a radiology department you may be able to bum a few minutes with the densitometer. (I found that a dozen bagels and some cream cheese smooths the process.)

-- Don Karon (dkaron@socal.rr.com), June 22, 2001

Answers

I have a color anaylzer that i use. Of course you have to have a set of reference negatives to use to null out with. But, once you have the numbers set it works fine. I can't read specific density but I can tell if the negative is within an acceptable range. My reference negatives where read with a densitometer and fall into to the standard Zone numbers.

-- Ann Clancy (aclancy@broadband.att.com), June 22, 2001.

I use an analyser pro from rh designs which is a handy tool for b&w printing. It also has a denistometer mode which is surprising accurate compared to a 'real densitometer'.

-- Frederik Boone (frederik.boone@harol.be), June 25, 2001.