Any advice on what I should look for in buying a used Densitometer ?

[Andy F]

Hi,

I am thinking about buying a Densitometer. I feel like it would give me greater control over my negatives. I have never used one before. On eBay I see that they run in price anywhere from around $150 to about $1,000. The higher end ones are probably new. I am not sure what I should be looking for when I buy one and more importantly I am not sure what I should be trying to avoid. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

-Andrew

[Alan9940]

For any unit you're considering, I'd suggest finding out what accessories would have shipped with it and/or been available when new. For example, the Gretag unit I bought years ago came with different sized apertures for the arm and the calibration stuff. You'll need the calibration stuff.

[Michael R]

So, first off, it will not give you greater control, and you can improve your prints just as well without one. Buy one if you want to learn about sensitometry hands-on, so to speak. They are fairly delicate instruments, so if you buy one used, try to get one in the best condition you can find, and it would be good if it comes with calibration strips/patches (although again these will be decreasingly useful with wear and tear/age) if it's a more recent or current model you might be able to replace those.

X-rite units are the ones people seem to end up with most often.

Hi,

I am thinking about buying a Densitometer. I feel like it would give me greater control over my negatives. I have never used one before. On eBay I see that they run in price anywhere from around $150 to about $1,000. The higher end ones are probably new. I am not sure what I should be looking for when I buy one and more importantly I am not sure what I should be trying to avoid. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

-Andrew

[Drew Wiley]

Densitometers are highly useful for plotting curves and other analytic work. They aren't really needed for learning basic black and white film or paper exposure and development skills. There's nothing "delicate" about my own XRite clamshell style transmission one; it's downright rugged. You can still find these, though there's a substitute brand now, making the same style, costing btween $250 to maybe $300. I can't immediately recall the brand name. There seem to be some good condition XRite 331's on EBay right now.

XRite still makes numerous more sophisticated models. My wife once worked in Biotech quality control room using a custom-made trade secret 6 million dollar densitometer made by X-Rite. But even XRite didn't have access to the software which interpreted those readings. The room itself had four-foot thick concrete walls with a timed bank vault door, and no one in the whole corporation knew more than a necessary small portion of what went into the cumulative software, other than the two founding partners. An industrial spy tried, but was caught.

[AJ Edmondson]

Check availability/price of replacement lamps. Are you looking for both transmission and reflectance? Calibration standards for reflectance models are more difficult to find. Also, some of the later models have a backup battery for retention of calibration values and these are frequently soldered in... without the battery you have to enter the calibration values each time (time-consuming and aggravating). Though they are pretty rare nowadays beware of the older photo-multiplier tube models as the tubes are difficult/impossible to source and drift quite a bit. You might just consider buying a Stouffer Step-wedge to use for comparative values since you are not likely to be looking for absolute values. Not trying to discourage you but the truth is that densitometers, like sensitometers, are just not that useful for general photography. There is admittedly some value in being able to measure the change in density with altered times, temperatures, etc but a simple comparison to a step-wedge can tell you a lot without having to maintain calibration standards. Good luck regardless of the direction you choose.
Joel

[Drew Wiley]

Refer to my old posts on "visual densitometry". All you need is a Stouffer 21-step CALIBRATED wedge, that is, stating the actual measured densities of each density patch on the package itself. It should be a modern step wedge and not an old yellowed one. Then you take a piece of black card stock and use an ordinary hole punch and make two holes about 3 inches apart. You use this atop a light box. You look at whatever portion of negative density you're trying to evaluate, and compare it visually with to the closest value on the step wedge itself. Cheap, fast, easy, and plenty good for most purposes.

[Daniel Unkefer]

I bought a really neat bakelite Kodak Visual Densitometer for $40 at Midwest Photo thirty years ago. It sits in my darkroom although I've not used it in prolly 25 years. It was a yellow filter wheel which visually adjusts the brightness, simply match the density of the film (target within target) and read the density off the wheel. It's deadly accurate and at one point I was fully and finely tuned in.

And the Art Deco bakelite styling is cool too

[ksj]

A relatively inexpensive new purchase alternative is the Printalyzer Densitometer.

[Certain Exposures]

Hello, have you heard of Dektronics yet? It's a new company by Derek. He made black and white densitometer. He's working on a color one now.


The Naked Photographer review of his densitometer:



Another video by Derek on his project progress so far.

A relatively inexpensive new purchase alternative is the Printalyzer Densitometer.

I just realized you linked to his product. I'll leave this up anyway.