From: Parish, Roy (rparis@lsuhsc.edu)
Date: 03/12/01-03:16:12 PM Z
Will someone tell me how to unsubscribe? I get e-mail at work, and there's
just too much traffic. Nice service and fascinating topic, but they're
going to shoot me!
Roy Parish
rparis@lsuhsc.edu
-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Ferguson <tomf2468@pipeline.com>
To: alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Date: Monday, March 12, 2001 2:18 PM
Subject: Re: Poor man's densitometer
> From: sstoney <sstoney@pdq.net>
> Subject: RE: Poor man's densitometer
>
> The thing about using a densitometer is, I think in the end it will
probably
> save me time and materials, both of which are in short supply for the poor
> person. A lot of people think the zone system stuff is too "techie" and
> interferes with intuition, but it helped me a lot. In fact, I am
beginning to
> think that a good understanding of sensitometry in general is pretty
crucial
> to getting good prints economically.
Yes, there are a few facts that gets discarded in the "intuition"
discussions. One: if you work primarily on intuition, you must be able to
afford the cost of many mistakes. Two: if you work primarily on intuition,
you must be able to afford the time of many mistakes. Three: if you work
primarily on intuition, you must be able to afford the years needed to build
that intuition into a worthwhile tool.
To those with the time and money, congratulations. For the rest of us, some
help in getting to a good print quickly/cheaply is needed and helps the
beginner not give up before he/she succeeds.
I use my "poor man's densitometer" on every enlarged neg I make, and for all
my palladium and/or platinum printing. It saves much time and money by
telling me if the neg is worth printing (do I need to remake the enlarged
neg) and it gives me a good starting contrast and print time for my final
platinum prints (saves a few sheets of very $$ paper).
A "two punch-holed cards and 21 step table" densitoneter does just fine for
some, I've never been terribly accurate with it.
I have a good friend (a long time lurker on this list, yes I'm talking about
you John) who has the "intuition" thing down. He can hold a neg up to the
florescent fixtures in his studio ceiling and declare F8 at 16 seconds. A
few minutes latter he will have a &%^#$ good silver print. He can also do
this with studio flash lighting ("the voices say this should be F32....")
It is reallllllly upsetting to watch ;-(
But, these intuitions have taken him years to develop. I don't think "the
voices" have been very accurate in his new endeavor, cyanotype printing.
>
> As for making a densitometer out of a spotmeter using the directions in
Phil
> Davis' book: can you still use the spotmeter as a spotmeter after you've
made
> it into a densitometer?
>
> --shannon
>
Yes, If you follow Phil's instructions you simply unscrew it from the stand
(like taking a camera off a tripod) and remove the filters/lenses. If you
follow my previously posted "simplification", you just unscrew the
filters/lenses.
-- Tom Ferguson http://www.ferguson-photo-design.com
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