Hi all:
I have been slowly trying to teach myself Black and White photography and the use of a view camera for the past 2 years. I have been working with the Zone System, and trying to nail down my exposure and development system. Up until now, I think I've been misinterpreting and incorrectly visualizing zones 3 and 8 in my mind's eye, because my negatives always seem to be flat and lifeless, with no true black or bright paper white. Zone 3 seems to be too light and zone 8 too dark. I am thinking I am overexposing and underdeveloping. Or my perception of what the zones actually are is off and I am placing on zone 3 thinking it will be darker than it actually is, and vice versa for zone 8. When I look at a sample photo illustrating zone placement in John Schafer's Ansel Adams Guide book 1, there seems to be detail in zones 2 and 9, where I imagined zones 3 and 8 should lie.
I can only go by the zone scales I have in my books, but I am seeing that many photos have detail in areas darker than the traditional zone 3 and lighter than the traditional zone 8 according to the scales in my books and am wondering if this is generally the case. I'm simply trying to learn exactly what zones 3 and 8 look like in a print so I can take that back to my learning of the zone system, because so far they've been more theoretical to me than practical, and not what I would interpret them as when looking at the print of a master photographer. A perfect example is Huntington Witherill's "Reflections, Badwater, Death Valley 1979", page 56 of "Orchestrating Icons". I see detail in the upper downsloping hill, but this large triangular area is considerably darker than what the zone 3 tone is on my tonal scale in Schafer's book, and in my contact prints where I have placed the shadows with detail on zone 3. It *is* however, where I would have imagined zone 3 to lie on a tonal scale according to the adage of "darkest area you want to keep detail". Maybe the tonal scale in Schafer's book is inaccurate, and this is just a bunch of blithering.....
Are many people Selenium toning your negatives to achieve this detail beyond the "usable zones" (while placing on zone 3 and developing for zone 8 first)? Or is there actually some slight (but not "important") detail in zones 2 and 9, and I've been visualizing wrong?
Thanks,
Tim
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