Zone system with incidence meter?

[stradibarrius]

I have searched is this section of the forum about the zone system. I am reading Bruce Barnbaum's book "The Art of Photography and he deals with the zone system quite a bit and I believe that I have a good beginners understanding of the system. My question is about using an incident light reading with the zone system? All of the threads seem to talk about using a spot meter which I do not have presently.
Do you have to have a spot meter to use the ZS?

[Tony Evans]

The Zone system is based on first measuring the reflected brightness of diferent parts of the scene. Don't think you can do this with an incident meter.

[vinny]

Some may say it can be done without a spot meter but they are full of it.

[Shen45]

I have searched is this section of the forum about the zone system. I am reading Bruce Barnbaum's book "The Art of Photography and he deals with the zone system quite a bit and I believe that I have a good beginners understanding of the system. My question is about using an incident light reading with the zone system? All of the threads seem to talk about using a spot meter which I do not have presently.
Do you have to have a spot meter to use the ZS?

I think if you read some of the info on this site you may find some of the answers you are looking for.

http://btzs.org/

All the best

Steve

[Bill Burk]

You can use a reflective meter with traditional Zone System. It just means getting close to the subject. After all, that's all a spotmeter does.

[Helen Bach]

Using the Zone System with incident measuring, and the reasoning behind it, is covered in Minor White's Zone System Manual. Later on it was covered in greater depth in Beyond the Zone System.

Best,
Helen

[ic-racer]

With an incident meter you can make an adequately exposed negative without having to guess at the zones. It works pretty well but it is difficult to calibrate.

[Duane Polcou]

The Zone system is based on first measuring the reflected brightness of diferent parts of the scene. Don't think you can do this with an incident meter.

Precisely. A spot meter measures light reflected off of different objects, an incident meter measures the light falling on objects. Incident meter readings provide no information as to the range of subject brightness, sometimes called f-stop range, which would then dictate development times and agitation strategies to lower or increase negative contrast with B/W film.

Plus an incident meter only allows you to measure the light hitting the meter dome. If the light intensity at your meter's location is different than the light intensity at your subject matter's location, then your exposure will be off. A spot meter eliminates this problem.

[Tobias Key]

Many incident meters can take a spot meter attachment. That would be a relatively cheap solution if you can get one for your meter.

[Sevo]

Plus an incident meter only allows you to measure the light hitting the meter dome. If the light intensity at your meter's location is different than the light intensity at your subject matter's location, then your exposure will be off. A spot meter eliminates this problem.

No, it does not, or rather, it only would when used with a test target of known reflectivity and appropriate size and shape (where it would BE a incident meter) - otherwise it meters the (unknown) reflectivity of whatever you point it at. The Zone system tries to grapple with that lack of absolute values by using a contrast matched rather than absolute exposure.

In general, incident metering and Zone system have quite different intentions - incident does match exposure to (usually factory) film specs while Zone matches development and printing to the contrast range of the scenery.