Sensitometry is the scientific study of light-sensitive materials, especially photographic film. This article is mainly concerned with Still photography film For Motion picture film please see Film stock. The study has its origins in the work by Ferdinand Hurter and Vero Charles Driffield (circa 1876) with early black-and-white emulsions. Ferdinand Hurter ( 15 March 1844 &ndash 12 March 1898) was a Swiss industrial Chemist who settled in England Vero Charles Driffield (1848–1915 was a chemical Engineer who also became involved in Photographic research [1] They determined how the density of silver produced varied with the amount of light received, and the method and time of development. In Film developing, photographic developer (or just developer) is a chemical that makes the Latent image on the film or print visible
Plots of film density (log of opacity) versus the log of exposure are called characteristic curves,[2] Hurter–Driffield curves,[3] H–D curves,[3] HD curves,[4] H & D curves,[5] D–logE curves,[6] or D–logH curves. In Photography, exposure is the total amount of Light allowed to fall on the photographic medium ( Photographic film or Image sensor) during the [7] The overall shape is a bit like an "S" slanted so that its base and top are horizontal. There is usually a central region of the HD curve which approximates to a straight line, called the "linear" or "straight-line" portion; the slope of this region is called the gamma. Gamma correction, gamma nonlinearity, gamma encoding, or often simply gamma, is the name of a nonlinear operation used to code and decode luminance The low end is called the "toe", and at the top, the curve rounds over to form the "shoulder".
Usable values of gamma are typically between 0. 8 and 1. 2. (But values of up to 1. 5 may be useful for slides). A full set of HD curves for a film shows how these vary with developer type and time. [2]