I think many on this forum have experienced waxing and waning of interest in darkroom equipment. For example, my experience is the golden age of free and inexpensive darkroom equipment is already past. Just try to find a nice large format enlarger these days. It is getting harder and harder.
However, sensitometers are still available, but the availability is nearing the tail of availability. The availability is from the somewhat recent dump of analog equipment that occurred when Breast Mammography (the last radiographic holdout of FILM) finally went digital to join most of the other radiographic studies.
Why want one? In the past, analysis of film was time consuming, math intensive, and required expertise and information not commonly available to the average darkroom worker. However, today, forums like this and the internet in general, make all the research on film testing available from the comfort of one's home. Also, the availability of computers makes analysis of film data retrieved from the sensitometer almost trivial compared to the hours and years spent in the past.
For example I recently got some Shanghai 8x10 film. It only took a few moments to expose a strip in the sensitometert (hardest part was cutting an even strip to fit a 35mm film reel for processing), process the strip, dry with a blow dryer and read the values with a densitometer. The most challenging part was entering the data to my computer software with the goofy new keyboard that came with the new iMac I'm typing on now (no extra number keypad
) Almost instantly the software graphed the data and gave me a relative speed (compared to a fresh name-brand film) and gamma and almost as important, showed me the shape of the H&D curve. Way easier than trying to calibrate a monitor and color printer for the 'other system' of image reproduction.
However, sensitometers are still available, but the availability is nearing the tail of availability. The availability is from the somewhat recent dump of analog equipment that occurred when Breast Mammography (the last radiographic holdout of FILM) finally went digital to join most of the other radiographic studies.
Why want one? In the past, analysis of film was time consuming, math intensive, and required expertise and information not commonly available to the average darkroom worker. However, today, forums like this and the internet in general, make all the research on film testing available from the comfort of one's home. Also, the availability of computers makes analysis of film data retrieved from the sensitometer almost trivial compared to the hours and years spent in the past.
For example I recently got some Shanghai 8x10 film. It only took a few moments to expose a strip in the sensitometert (hardest part was cutting an even strip to fit a 35mm film reel for processing), process the strip, dry with a blow dryer and read the values with a densitometer. The most challenging part was entering the data to my computer software with the goofy new keyboard that came with the new iMac I'm typing on now (no extra number keypad
) Almost instantly the software graphed the data and gave me a relative speed (compared to a fresh name-brand film) and gamma and almost as important, showed me the shape of the H&D curve. Way easier than trying to calibrate a monitor and color printer for the 'other system' of image reproduction.
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