A self-calibrating technique measuring laser beam intensity distributions. 
A technique is described which yields quantitative photographic determinations of laser beam intensity distributions.  Each photograph is self-calibrated, eliminating the effect of variation from one film sample to another, by a technique which is indifferent to the nonlinear response of the emulsion.  Study of the beam divergence characteristics of a saturable dye, Q-switched ruby oscillator-amplifier system is presented.