BTZS Plotter for Windows

[Chuck_P]

Just wondering if anyone has purchased this graphing analysis program from the Tiny Octupus site. My Norton Safe Web is showing me that it has access to that site but that the site is unrated and untested......so it makes me a bit apprehensive to purchase from it.

 

[BCM]

No issues at all. They are pretty good about support as well.

 

[Chuck_P]

No issues at all. They are pretty good about support as well.

Wonderful to hear that, thank you.

 

[Chuck_P]

Does anyone who uses the BTZS Plotter know why you can't choose a Personal Speed Point of 2.7, this would be Zone I on the log exposure axis. The Plotter limits you to choosing between 2.1 and 2.6, just curious...............thanks.

 

[Bill Burk]

Does anyone who uses the BTZS Plotter know why you can't choose a Personal Speed Point of 2.7, this would be Zone I on the log exposure axis. The Plotter limits you to choosing between 2.1 and 2.6, just curious...............thanks.

My bet is that if you asked them they could fix that for you. Small companies can be responsive to users. Curt Palm knocked out a request for me in about a week for his CompnTemp program.

Can you explain the personal speed point? Does the limit mean you can’t rate TMY2 at EI 64 if you wanted to? I have done that before. I made some beautiful prints from negatives where I gave significantly greater exposure than the film requires.

 

[Chuck_P]

Probably best for you to go here Bill. https://www.btzs.org/Articles/PSP.htm

I just don't think how I expose my step tablet (as you know via Schafer and exposing to Zone X) works with BTZS. The PSP is apparently only informative in Plotter if you have calibrated the test set up using the enlarger to expose the tablet. I'm not going to do that...........I have one more test film to develop at the longest time......and I'll still input the data into Plotter, but will be suspicious of what I'm seeing. I'll also graph by hand using your graph paper to compare.

 

[aparat]

Probably best for you to go here Bill. https://www.btzs.org/Articles/PSP.htm

I just don't think how I expose my step tablet (as you know via Schafer and exposing to Zone X) works with BTZS. The PSP is apparently only informative in Plotter if you have calibrated the test set up using the enlarger to expose the tablet. I'm not going to do that...........I have one more test film to develop at the longest time......and I'll still input the data into Plotter, but will be suspicious of what I'm seeing. I'll also graph by hand using your graph paper to compare.

Yes, in WinPlotter, the PSP can be set between 2.1 and 2.6.

I think it would work with your in-camera setup by calibrating your exposure such that the first two steps of the 21-step step tablet have the B+F density, and the third step is maybe around 0.01-0.02 above that. So, for example, if you use Delta 100, process it in stock XTOL, and find that, say, at around step 18, you get the 0.1 + B+F speed point, then that point along the exposure axis becomes your PSP for all ISO 100 films. At first glance, it seems like a crude method, but it can work, as long as you follow the same procedure for all other ISO 100 films. For ISO 400, you would simply reduce your camera exposure by 2 EV.

The only caveat is that you're going to get some flare contribution, which kind of throws a wrench into the WinPlotter works, but it can work, after a fashion.

In my program, I wrote an entire module to be essentially a drop-in replacement for WinPlotter, but it will be free-of-charge and cross-platform. I run WinPlotter in a virtual machine on my Linux workstation. I like WinPlotter. Having said that, I have other modules in my program that offer alternative methods of doing film and paper testing, just so people can have a few options to choose from. WinPlotter is very opinionated, which is why, I think, it's not as popular as it could have been otherwise.

 

[Bill Burk]

Ok it’s where the speed point generally falls on the x-axis marked with the density of the Stouffer scale that “attenuates” the main exposure.

They just don’t want it so close to 3.0 that you don’t get any toe in the graph.

They want you to hit your tests with a little less light. I add an 0.6 Neutral Density filter to catch more of the toe for faster film because I can’t really change the light flash on the EG&G sensitometer. You could simply close down a stop or step up a shutter speed.

But they don’t allow a full stop in either direction, you can tell them that allowing 0.2 additional either side would be reasonable. They could have an informational bubble explaining the recommended range but should allow .2 over and under.