Inexpensive X-Rite densitometers - useful for scanner calibration?

I just learned about the X-Rite 334 Densitometer. On eBay they go for practically nothing, and there are a lot of listings. A manual is attached.

Has anyone used such a device for medium format? for 35 mm? How? Did the effort improve your scanning results?

Most importantly, those are sensitometers, not densitometers.

MattKing said:

Most importantly, those are sensitometers, not densitometers.

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Ooops. Regardless, is such a device useful in calibrating a scanner or tuning the scanner software?

If you want to make a set of film exposures to be able to plot characteristic curves using your scanner as a defacto densitometer, yes. If you want to create a colour profile for transparencies, you'll need an appropriate colour target for building an icc profile. Otherwise, most of the techniques you need amount to getting the scanner to spit out an unclipped & un-inverted image of the negative so that you can do the rest of the procedure in Photoshop (or your choice of other software) etc.

Lachlan Young said:

If you want to make a set of film exposures to be able to plot characteristic curves using your scanner as a defacto densitometer, yes. If you want to create a colour profile for transparencies, you'll need an appropriate colour target for building an icc profile. Otherwise, most of the techniques you need amount to getting the scanner to spit out an unclipped & un-inverted image of the negative so that you can do the rest of the procedure in Photoshop (or your choice of other software) etc.

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Understand the point about a proper IT-8 target for full color calibration of a scanner. Here I was just wondering about the black and the white points, primarily for B&W negatives.

By the way, anyone have a Kodachrome IT-8 target that they might be willing to sell?

An additional question on this topic. I have a Nikon 5000ED scanner, which is 35 mm only. So let's say that instead of buying an inexpensive sensitometer, I just buy a Stouffer Industries T4110 step wedge for $41. It's 1" x 9", or about 6 35 mm frames. The 5000 scanner will only do a standard 35 mm frame, 24 x 36 mm. So do I just put the entire Stouffer step wedge in the scanner's filmstrip holder and scan each "frame" and then assemble the result in Photoshop?

The nice thing about one of these inexpensive sensitometers is that I can use it many times, but it's a lot more work than just using that Stouffer step wedge.