Custom Film Testing

[Eric Jones]

Hello All,

I am in the process of doing some custom film tests and I am trying to decide which direction to take. I have exposed 5 pieces of Fuji Acros with a Stouffer 31-step Wedge and developed them with Clayton F76+ in BTZS tubes at 4,5.5,8,11 & 16 minutes respectively. I have read all the corresponding densitites with my X-Rite 810 densitometer and have them in an excel spreadsheet. Now, comes the time to make sense of the data and their in lies my questions.

Going the full BTZS software route will entail an investment of around $500 for me. Plotter, ExpoDev, VirtualPC (I am on a Mac and have no access to a PC anywhere) and a Palm(for the ExpoDev). The other rub with BTZS is that I am a complete spot meter type and do not prefer to switch over to the incident method. Does any of the software allow use of a spot meter as an alternative or does is it require trial and error to come up with equivalents? If I get at the minimum the Plotter Software and Virtual PC will I be able to apply the data from Plotter to a more traditional zone system spot meter approach?

I guess the other option, is the method described in the book "Way Beyond Monochrome" but the idea of hand charting, etc. does not thrill me very much.

So, I would love to hear people's thoughts or insights into which direction to precede.

Thanks

Eric

 

[sanking]

Hello All,

I am in the process of doing some custom film tests and I am trying to decide which direction to take. I have exposed 5 pieces of Fuji Acros with a Stouffer 31-step Wedge and developed them with Clayton F76+ in BTZS tubes at 4,5.5,8,11 & 16 minutes respectively. I have read all the corresponding densitites with my X-Rite 810 densitometer and have them in an excel spreadsheet. Now, comes the time to make sense of the data and their in lies my questions.

Going the full BTZS software route will entail an investment of around $500 for me. Plotter, ExpoDev, VirtualPC (I am on a Mac and have no access to a PC anywhere) and a Palm(for the ExpoDev). The other rub with BTZS is that I am a complete spot meter type and do not prefer to switch over to the incident method. Does any of the software allow use of a spot meter as an alternative or does is it require trial and error to come up with equivalents? If I get at the minimum the Plotter Software and Virtual PC will I be able to apply the data from Plotter to a more traditional zone system spot meter approach?

I guess the other option, is the method described in the book "Way Beyond Monochrome" but the idea of hand charting, etc. does not thrill me very much.

So, I would love to hear people's thoughts or insights into which direction to precede.

Thanks

Eric

Eric,

I too am a Mac person so I experienced some of the feelings you are now having when the Plotter program, which was originally written for Mac, was ported over to the Windows environment.

The easiest thing for you to do would be to get a program that will emulate Windows XP on your Mac. The other solution is to buy a PC laptop that runs Windows. And a third is to obtain a very old copy of Plotter that will run on MAC, but for that you need a very old Mac using System 7.5 or so.

There is not, to my knowledge, a program that will run in Exel with anything equivalent to the features of WinPlotter. My understanding is that such a program would be relatively easy to write for someone who understands how to do so, and who also understand what needs to be done, but so far as I know nothing is available like this at the moment I write this.

As for BTZS, the WinPlotter program allows you to plot values for either the incident system or for Zone System with spot meter, so in that respect WinPlotter is not a further complication for you.

Sandy