The tone reproduction of colour photographic systems typical of those used for producing reflection prints and reversal transparencies for amateurs has been measured, both by the usual sensitometric methods, and by the telephotometry of images seen in typical viewing situations. It was found that the high slopes of the sensitometric characteristic curves of these systems were reduced by camera, printer, and viewing flare, especially the latter. The overall log luminance transfer characteristic, as measured by telephotometry, was found to have a slope, in the middle part of the scale, of about 1.5 for projected transparencies and 1.0 for reflection prints: these values are in close agreement with those found in other investigations, in which subjective brightness scaling was used.
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Hunt et al. (1969) studied this question.