Reciprocity failure in continuous-wave holography

Reciprocity failure is shown to occur at beam irradiances commonly obtainable in continuous-wave holography with an argon-ion laser. Results are given for a variety of common developers used with Agfa-Gevaert material, and typical graphs of optical density versus exposure time at nominally constant exposure levels are shown. A variation in optical density of up to 50% is seen to occur between 0.125-s and 8-s exposure times for constant irradiance-time products. The conclusion is drawn that, when used as described, faster developers exhibit greater reciprocity failure than slower developers.