First foray into Zone - what happened?

[Scott --]

Hi, all -

Ok, last week I read The Negative. Bought me a Pentax Spotmeter V. Made me a bag bellows to tide me over until my *real* bellows arrive. Went out today and took some pictures..



Ok, so it looks to me like I should've done an N-1 development on these to pull the highlights back down to earth. Here's what's confusing me: I metered the darkest areas I wanted to keep texture in and placed them in Zone III. I checked all the highlight areas, and, at most, they were Zone VIII. Why'd they blow out completely? I thought Zone VIII retained some detail.

While I'm thinking of it, too, is there a storehouse (similar to digitaltruth) for N+/- times for different films/developers somewhere? Or am I gonna have to do some testing?

Thanks,
Scott

[cyrus]

Hi, all -

Ok, last week I read The Negative. Bought me a Pentax Spotmeter V. Made me a bag bellows to tide me over until my *real* bellows arrive. Went out today and took some pictures.

Ok, so it looks to me like I should've done an N-1 development on these to pull the highlights back down to earth. Here's what's confusing me: I metered the darkest areas I wanted to keep texture in and placed them in Zone III. I checked all the highlight areas, and, at most, they were Zone VIII. Why'd they blow out completely? I thought Zone VIII retained some detail.

While I'm thinking of it, too, is there a storehouse (similar to digitaltruth) for N+/- times for different films/developers somewhere? Or am I gonna have to do some testing?

Thanks,
Scott

N times are probably too dependent on your development style (agitation/enlarger/paper/developer etc) for a standard chart to useful but some Zone books have such charts.


Perhaps that could also explain why your highlights were blown - too much agitation caused too much contrast in what was already a contrasty scene?

Remember the formula: expose for shadows develop for highlights. You exposed for shadow when you placed the textured shadows in Zone III so you have done the first part. Now you have to get control over your highlights and so you have to figure out what your particular N is - and that means more testing. Fun, huh?!

Its probably best to do this testing indoors with an evenly lit subject that has some texture - like a towel or a sweater. (The color of course doesn't make a difference)

[David A. Goldfarb]

This testing with actual prints is where you can take account of the print process. As a starting point, you might target your Zone VIII density at, say, Dlog 1.2, but if this is giving you blown out highlights with your enlarger/paper/developer of choice, run some tests with the Zone VIII targeted at 1.1 or 1.0.

Or did you not actually do the film speed test and the development time test? If that's the case, then, yes, you need to do some testing.

[steve simmons]

From here the high values do not look blown out.

Did you test for your film speed and developing time? Don't use what you may read in a book or magazine, you have to test for your own. Without testing you don't have any foundation.

Are you sure you gave less exposure to move the shadows down to 3. You would be surprised how many people want to open up to give less exposure.

Some people feel you need a densitometer to test and others don't. There is a simple straightforward testing procedure in an article in the Free Articles section of the View Camera web site

www.viewcamera.com

steve simmons

[Scott --]

N times are probably too dependent on your development style (agitation/enlarger/paper/developer etc) for a standard chart to useful but some Zone books have such charts.

Perhaps that could also explain why your highlights were blown - too much agitation caused too much contrast in what was already a contrasty scene?

Cyrus, I'm using a Beseler drum on a Uniroller base. Over agitation might be a problem now, but I've never had a problem with it before. Need to test.

Or did you not actually do the film speed test and the development time test? If that's the case, then, yes, you need to do some testing.

David, I'm (as a starting point) using the developing times I've always used for this film/developer. I've gotten good results from it before, so I'm a little confused.

Are you sure you gave less exposure to move the shadows down to 3. You would be surprised how many people want to open up to give less exposure.

Some people feel you need a densitometer to test and others don't. There is a simple straightforward testing procedure in an article in the Free Articles section of the View Camera web site

I just checked the meter, and yes, I gave less exposure with the move to Zone III. Wouldn't put it passed me, though. And besides, the rocks in the picture look about where I wanted them to. It's the parts in the light that look blown to me. So, I need to test.

I downloaded and printed the article on the VC page. And I'm going to reread your coverage of Zone use. Maybe something'll click that didn't yet. It made sense when I read Ansel's version...

Thanks for the help, guys. I'm looking forward to nailing this.

Scott

[David A. Goldfarb]

You got good results before, but with a different metering method, so maybe you were really underexposing a bit, and now you're giving more exposure to be sure that you've placed the shadows appropriately, and maybe that's pushing the highlights out of range. If you're shooting TXP, that's easy to do.

At the same time, you haven't tested for film speed, so you don't really know if your Zone III placement is right. You've got good shadow detail, so it's probably on the straight line portion of the curve, but maybe you could drop the exposure a half stop or a full stop, and still have good shadows without pushing the highlights off the scale.

[Scott --]

FWIW, I was shooting Arista.EDU Ultra 100 at 100. So shooting at 80 or 50 might bring the highlights back into range? Kind of makes sense.

My old metering method was kind of an amalgam of incident metering and center weighted Canon A2 metering. Not very precise, whatever it was.

[Ken Lee]

Unless I am mistaken, you haven't mentioned how you are making the positives we see here: via scanning ? enlarging ? contact printing ? What are we looking at: a scan of a print ? a scan of a negative ?

Your negatives might be perfect, if contact printed on number 2 paper, or maybe not - depending on your local water supply, thermometer, timer, style of agitation, etc. And that's just the Negative - never mind a print, where even more factors can come into play.

Your scanner might not be up to the task of penetrating the dense high values of the negatives. Or, you might not be using your scanner software correctly.

As they say, "The possibilities are endless"...no ?

For what it's worth, Photoshop says that the high values of the water in the first image, reach around 99%, which we can translate to Zone 9.9, IE pure white. Keep in mind that even a 1-degree spot meter reads a fairly large area from a distance. I wonder whether the meter could accurately read those areas of highest brightness, without being influenced by adjacent tones.

Based on experience, to get texture in dark stones in the shade - at the same time as white water in full sun - requires more than a simple N-1 contraction, whatever your meter might have suggested to the contrary.

So you probably did get N-1, but it just wasn't enough.

Another suggestion is that you need to determine the "normal" film speed first, before you can determine alternate development schemes. Otherwise, you have no point of reference.

[Donald Qualls]

Assuming your scanning reflects your printing, those look to me like you need to expose about half a stop more (to account for speed loss) and then develop at least 20% less than you did.

The point of testing is to *find out* what values you need to use. I find I have to cut almost all published times by anything from 20% to 50% (Ilford times are especially bad; someone at Ilford *really* likes contrast). And the basis of Zone has been only semi-jokingly boiled down as "expose more, develop less".

FWIW, that first one especially is probably a "high contrast scene" and would genuinely have called for N-1 -- but until you know what your N is, you can't give N-1. You really need to test with a gray chart, or else do the "towel test" (expose a solid color towel for a range from -5 to +5 stops and examine for texture and details to find Zones I, II, VIII and IX, then determine how many stops of actual exposure separated those negatives and back out how much to change your development to get N), before you can do much with expansions and contractions.

As it is, it sounds like you're trying to take a shortcut into Zone, bypassing the testing (which, I'll admit, is harder to do without a densitometer, though some scanners can be made for work for that task).

[Scott --]

Unless I am mistaken, you haven't mentioned how you are making the positives we see here: via scanning ? enlarging ? contact printing ? What are we looking at: a scan of a print ? a scan of a negative ?

Your negatives might be perfect, if contact printed on number 2 paper, or maybe not - depending on your local water supply, thermometer, timer, style of agitation, etc. And that's just the Negative - never mind a print, where even more factors can come into play.

Your scanner might not be up to the task of penetrating the dense high values of the negatives. Or, you might not be using your scanner software correctly.

As they say, "The possibilities are endless"...no ?

For what it's worth, Photoshop says that the high values of the water in the first image, reach around 99%, which we can translate to Zone 9.9, IE pure white. Keep in mind that even a 1-degree spot meter reads a fairly large area from a distance. I wonder whether the meter could accurately read those areas of highest brightness, without being influenced by adjacent tones.

Based on experience, to get texture in dark stones in the shade - at the same time as white water in full sun - requires more than a simple N-1 contraction, whatever your meter might have suggested to the contrary.

So you probably did get N-1, but it just wasn't enough.

Another suggestion is that you need to determine the "normal" film speed first, before you can determine alternate development schemes. Otherwise, you have no point of reference.

Ok, I have some more reading to do. I'm scanning these negatives, and on examination, there's detail in the negative where there's not in the scan. My gut tells me that the highlights need to come down a bit, though, but that might be a matter of finding actual EI.

Problem I have with testing right now is that every protocol I've read calls for printing, which I just am not set up to do yet. I understand that creating the optimal negative is coupled to what you'll do with it (ie, printing), but I'm not there yet.

Assuming your scanning reflects your printing, those look to me like you need to expose about half a stop more (to account for speed loss) and then develop at least 20% less than you did.

The point of testing is to *find out* what values you need to use. I find I have to cut almost all published times by anything from 20% to 50% (Ilford times are especially bad; someone at Ilford *really* likes contrast). And the basis of Zone has been only semi-jokingly boiled down as "expose more, develop less".

FWIW, that first one especially is probably a "high contrast scene" and would genuinely have called for N-1 -- but until you know what your N is, you can't give N-1. You really need to test with a gray chart, or else do the "towel test" (expose a solid color towel for a range from -5 to +5 stops and examine for texture and details to find Zones I, II, VIII and IX, then determine how many stops of actual exposure separated those negatives and back out how much to change your development to get N), before you can do much with expansions and contractions.

As it is, it sounds like you're trying to take a shortcut into Zone, bypassing the testing (which, I'll admit, is harder to do without a densitometer, though some scanners can be made for work for that task).

I wouldn't say I'm trying to shortcut my way into Zone, but I might be jumping too far at first. I guess, since I've always done ok with box speeds and my usual development, it'd follow that I could use that as a starting point. Guess I have some unlearning to do.