I lucked out and bought my Brumac about 10 years ago. It is a transmission
reflection job and their market is mostly in cinematography. I picked it up
for $100.00 at C&H surplus in Pasadena, the greatest toy store in the
world. I got it home and couldn't for the life of me to get it to work. I
called Brumac in Huntington Beach. I found out that I needed a power supply.
"Ok," I said, "How much?"
"You'll have to talk to Mr. Wang in the Lab, he can tell you which one,
I'll transfer you."
Mr. Wang said "You need model such and such, but it is too much money --
$600.00 -- way to much! Do not buy ours. All you need to buy is a battery
replacment power supply at auto supply store. Then put a big resistor
across the terminals to bring it down to 12 volts."
I thanked him profusely for his generous help and I got transferred back to
the sales department.
"Which one did he say to buy?"
"Oh I found out that the other gizmo in the box is the power supply so I
don't need to buy one." I wasn't going to nail my newly found friend Mr. Wang.
She said to bring it in and they would calibrate it. I did and they
replaced the main board, and calibrated it for $100.00. So for $215.00 I
got a brand new ref-trans densitometer.
(Names have been changed to protect the innocent.)
While I was in the office I say a huge Ansco densitometer, it was about the
size of a small refrigerator and had what looked like a telephone dial on
top. I asked where they got that. The said that a few years earlier -- the
early 80's -- they took their latest and greatest densitometer over to show
the Soviet film industry and had to declare it on entry. They decided to
leave it for them to try out, but were told that they would have to take it
back out with them as they would check the paper work on leaving. Well,
they thought maybe any old densitometer would work, so they looked around
and found this monster in a back room. Besides the word Ansco, it had in
big letters "D E N S I T O M E T E R" on it and they figured that just
might do. It did. Now they have the one that Sergei Eisenstein's crew used
in the 30's.
I also have the Weston that Captain Norwood used to develop his light meter
with but that's another story.
--Dick
At 09:05 AM 5/22/98 -0800, Tom Ferguson wrote:
>> I'm looking at Bostick & Sullivan's page and the calibrated one costs
>$19 (uncalibrated $8). Is there still a less expensive alternative
>available?<
>
>You might get one cheaper going directly to Stouffer, but $8 is a good
>price. Stouffer seems a lot more reasonably priced than Kodak. I can think
>of no reason for the average alt photographer to need the calibrated
>version. I expect you would spend far more than $8 trying to make one!
>
>Believe me, you will use this a lot. They are an enormous help in the alt
>darkroom. I think I own 4 of them, and wouldn't want to own less. I
>started in alt work as a die hard zone system person. For shooting I still
>think that way, in the darkroom I now think in step wedge! I blame Judy
>Seigel for my split personality ;-) They really are two different ways of
>saying the same thing, but the step wedge is so easy and intuitive for alt
>darkroom work.
>
>Get Judy's PF, good article on their use. If you are as neurotic as me,
>you might want to spend slightly more and get the Stouffer T3110. This is
>very similar to the one the list has been discussing (T2115), but has
>thirtyone 1/3 stop (0.1DU) steps rather than twentyone 1/2 stop (0.15DU)
>steps.
>
>I don't remember if PF covered this in it's article. Most people use the
>"hole in the card, visual match" method of working with a step wedge. Most
>people are quite accurate doing this. I seem to lack this ability. I made
>a simple version of Phil Davis's spot meter/densitometer. Basically a spot
>meter with closeup diopler filters. Now I can match negative densities to
>step wedge densities very accurately and quickly.
>
>tomf2468@pipeline.com (Tom Ferguson)
>
Bostick & Sullivan
PO Box 16639, Santa Fe
NM 87506
505-474-0890 FAX 505-474-2857
<http://www.bostick-sullivan.com>http://www.bostick-sullivan.com