OK, I have finally been convinced to run some really basic film processing tests. I do not have a denistometer and do not indend to invest in one in the near future. However, I do have a good light table, a decent eye and a spot meter. To get a good idea of the density of my negatives, I need some sort of reference negative.

I was led to believe that Kodak has a B&W wedge reference negative available; actually, I used something like this when I worked in a lab to calibrate our densitometer. Does anybody know the correct number for this, or a source? Or even the correct name so I can at least search for it effectively?

A related question: The advice for testing seems to run to two camps: Calibrating your process to a known standard (i.e. density) and calibrating your process to your printing process (i.e. getting good prints, sort of calibrating the whole system). I scan. So I wonder if in fact I would be better of in tweaking the processing to achieving better scans, regardless of the absolute densities?