The applicability of hollow cathode and glow discharge light sources to the determination of minor constituents in steel was tested in the case of copper (0.033 − 0.34[wt]%) and aluminium (0.015 − 0. 16%). The linearity of the calibration graphs, reflected by the Bravais-Pearson coefficient, was found to be slightly improved in all the cases investigated when operating with hollow cathode. Furthermore, results showed that blackening values of the analytical lines can be plotted directly without resorting to reference lines.