Are the film specification sheets accurate?

[retro film]

Alright Photo Engineer, I appreciate your help.

 

[retro film]

I just have an interest in understanding the technical details of photography and how film works on a quantitative level. Im not actually going to use this in practice when I go out shooting film. Just for the interest of it.

 

[Photo Engineer]

Fair enough, but you end up working backwards in most cases. You work from a neutral step wedge and a color chard and work back to what does what you want. Often this is empirical and this is a key point.

PE

 

[AgX]

Data Sheets are written by engineers for engineers.

I stated that above.
Well, today I glanced through one of my german books: "Applied Mathematics for Photographers and Photo Lab Technicians" 3.ed, 1971

On its densly printed 200 pages it covers stoichiometry and mixing equations, calculations based on the lens formula, calculation of wages, expenses and profits. But no word about logarithms...

The understanding of logarithms, among other things as indicated above, is a prerequisite of understanding data Sheets.

 

[DREW WILEY]

One of the first things I do when interested in a new film application is check the data sheets. And I'm certainly no engineer or math geek.
There are a lot of nuances one can recognize when comparing one set of data to another without having to quantify either the input or output.

 

[AgX]

I did not say that someone who is not an engineer cannot understand those data-sheets.
But there are quite a few prerequisites, even more when comparing data-sheets from different manufacturers.
One can easily draw wrong conclusions.

 

[DREW WILEY]

I have found the data sheets quite consistent within the parameters of single manufacturers. But comparing a Fuji data sheet to a Kodak
one, for example, might require a little caution until you understand the basis for each.