Zone system is...?

[jvuokko]

What do you think about philosophy of the zone system?
How do you use zone system or similar approaches?

Do you honestly only use zone system for ensuring that your pre-visualized print will be easy to print?
Or do you fell to the pool of groving masses which uses zone system only as an tool for handling different contrasts?

How often you found yourself measuring a scenery/subject with a spotmeter and thinking if the readings suits for your previsualization?

When you see a majastetic valley from the hill, is your first thought that I wan't to capture this! Or is it that "wow! This is beautiful. What if I could get print where those shadows are so dark that I don't see any texture in them and still that beatifully lighted area is very bright with full textures?"


How do I use zone system?

To me it is heavily a tool that I use with pre-visualization.
I learned that approach first from Adams's books, then in the times when I had to survive without a densitometer, I learned empirical approach.
In that approach the developing times were calibrated by examining final print tones and when I got developing and printing time that gave good tones from 0 to X, that was my N development. The 0 was pure black, X was paper white, the V matched a Kodak gray card when compared each other.

Ofcourse this was really precise only with one paper, enlarger and paper developer, but it teached me to approach negative from the pre-visualization. As this kind of system allowed printing of my exact pre-visualization with using always same paper, grade and printing time, it was like a photographing with a slide film; What you exposured was what you got (in the limits of precision so the actually calibrated value gave good proof print).

Later, when I got familiar with BTZS and sensitometry, I was wondering where all the pre-visualization has lost? I learned to use a spotmeter as an densitometer, begun to draw graphs... But I was too much with my original approach so I could not adapt the 0-IX scale instead of 0-X so the knowledge I got from practicing BTZS turned to the basics of my current zone system usage.

After I had slowly abandoned pure BTZS approach, I begun to learn Adams's original zone system with a sensitometry. Since then, I have used densitometer (now I have real one) for measuring charasteristic curves, calibrating my developing times.. But not more precise than usual guidelines for densities (1.25 - 1.35 for VIII with diffuser).
What I do is to put effort to the pre-visualization. I always think carefully what I see and how. How would I draw this scene if I would be using charcoal? Would I interrept this shadow as black or dark with texture?
How with the highlights?

I always write exposure notes about scenery, my thoughts and feelings. And my ideas how I visualize the final print and if the exposure is difficult, then I wrote it also down so that I know to give special developing or I know immediately when begun to printing that this negative has shadows that need to be dodged, ...

Not forgetting that notebooks also works a kind of diary

[percepts]

I think you miss the point completely. It is just a simple methodology for getting really good exposure of negative by removing risk of over or under exposure and at the same time ensuring everything is in printable range. You are deluding yourself if you think that means you automatically get a fantastic print as a result. It just gives a good base point from where the real work of printing begins.

[jvuokko]

I think you miss the point completely. It is just a simple methodology for getting really good exposure of negative by removing risk of over or under exposure and at the same time ensuring everything is in printable range. You are deluding yourself if you think that means you automatically get a fantastic print as a result. It just gives a good base point from where the real work of printing begins.

No, I am not expecting spectacular or fantastic prints. It's just a tool which helps a lot for getting print that I have planned (visualized) before exposing the negative.

As far as I have learned zone system, the point has been the visualization, not getting everything in to the printable range.
I let highlights blow up if I see them that way, shadows pure black if I see them that way at the moment of taking photograph.
How many stops latitude I need for particular photograph, that's something I never think about. I just measure whether all necessary tones fell to decited places after I have put initial zone value to somewhere on scale. If they don't fell where I wan't them to be, then comes expansions and contractions.. And other tools.

For example, usually photographers goes for less contrasty film/developer combo at clear winter days. When I look at my notes, I see that in many cases I have used N+2 at clear winter days to get really bright snows and deep shadows. The scenery like I saw it when took a photograph.

Ofcourse there's a caveat. If I later change my opinion, the negative probably doesn't have enough information for printing a totally different version. But so far it has worked for me, almost twenty years already and still no problems.

[Eric Biggerstaff]

you should of added a selection of "All the above", I use it for everything you list.

[jnantz]

" none of the above "

[neil poulsen]

In my view, trying to manipulate contrast by only using VC paper grades just doesn't cut it. No amount of paper contrast manipulation can fill the gap, if one doesn't have a properly exposed AND DEVELOPED negative.

Depending on the print, people will sometimes exclaim, "What great printing!" But, that misses the point. Printing is important; but the foundation is in the negative.

[Sevo]

I love these religious polls where every answer pertains to one and the same denomination...

[x] I am a zonal atheist and prefer to rot in incident hell.

[Jerry Bodine]

What Neil said.

[jvuokko]

Perhaps adding a poll was a bad idea.
I would like to get some food for thoughts and discussion about usage of zone system and similar methods in your work.

It should be not be religious. I am not a zone system religious. It's a good tool to my use in the way I currently use it. But that is only my most LF work and about half of my MF work.
As I take a lot of photograph that doesn't need frame work like a zone system, I use also build in exposure automatic, sunny-sixteen, ...

[rdenney]

Whatever method one uses, the density on the negative must make it possible to achieve the tonal values we visualize for the print. Adams and Picker developed the Zone System because Adams was asked to teach and realized that he had no methodology to describe how he did things. This violated his experience of learning music, for which he had been exposed to a well-defined teaching methodology. So, first and foremost, it's a teaching tool used to show new photographers how to achieve their visualization of a final print.

As most here know, what Adams mostly wanted to pass along was the notion that a photographer should be able to see the final print, and then manipulate their craft to achieve it. His example was the 1927 image of the Half Dome, where he described his realization that the sky needed to be nearly black to convey its stark contrast to the white snow and convey the true grandeur of the massif. He switched to a red filter to achieve that and printed accordingly. That was something like a dozen or more years before the Zone System came along, as I recall. Thus, the visualization was the objective, and the Zone System became the strategy.

So, when I approach a scene, the first thing I do is visualize the final print. Then, I measure values in the scene to see if their relationships match my visualization. If they don't, then I have to do something tactical--filtration, exposure manipulation, dodging or burning in, graduated neutral density filters--whatever. Once the values in the scene match my visualization, I need an exposure that will make it possible to render those values.

I do not think it is necessary for a person to be religious on this topic. Getting from measured values in the scene to specific densities in the print is not a matter of faith. Any method that works predictably is good. Those who measure the average of the scene and hope for the best (which is, for example, what incident measurement does) are the ones depending on faith. For low-contrast situations, it will usually work--it's easier to add contrast when printing than to remove it, though with a loss of smoothness in the gradation. But for high-contrast scenes where either highlights or shadows must be sacrificed, a decision must be made as to which sacrifice to make. That seems to me an artistic decision made not on faith but as a result of measurement and technique. The Zone System is one approach to doing that.

Rick "who can't think about exposure without thinking about zones" Denney