Questions on technique and the Zone System

[mfoot]

Hello all,

This is my first on this forum!

I recently bought a second hand Sinar Norma and a 90mm Schneider-Kreuznach 90mm f/8 Super Angulon from Mr Cad in
London. I've never done large format photography before so everything here is new to me. The camera is a little old and
heavy but it seems like a great camera to learn and practice on. I've been reading a lot and have been learning the Zone
System. I tried to use it recently on some night shots around Tower Bridge and the Mayor's Office in London. Below is a
scan of my first 4x5 negative with no adjustments. The film is Fomapan 200:

http://i.imgur.com/v5Vp09E.jpg

Note: I say no adjustments but I had to scan the negative in two halves and stitch it together as my scanner is a
Canoscan 9000F Mk II. That's all I did.

The shot was taken of the East side of the bridge from the South Bank at around 10pm a couple of weeks ago (late July or
early August 2015). I used a Sekonic L308-S lightmeter which doesn't have a spot meter that works on a very specific
location. I metered the shadow area under the bridge at 15s @ f/4 and the highlights at the top of the tower at 15s @
f/22. It seems to me like there's more than 5 stops difference between the shadows and bright lamps here but I am not
experienced enough to know how many by eye. To place the shadow area under the bridge in Zone III, I dropped two stops
to 15s @ f/5.8 and converted this to 120s @ f/22 because I wanted more depth of field. I remember reading somewhere that
reciprocity failure for Fomapan was terrible. I'd written down some user-given compensation times in my notebook of x3 @
1s, x9 @ 10s, x18 @ 100s. Not wanting to stand around for too long I eventually went back to 15s @ f/8 and added a x9
multiplier for reciprocity compensation giving me 135s @ f/8. When it came to development (also my first 4x5 developing
ever) I mixed 109g of powdered D-76 with 1L of water (stock dilution) and developed for 5.5 minutes based on similar
results on Massive Dev Chart. I consulted the Zone Scale compactions page from Steve Simmons' Using the View Camera and
chose a standard development because the meter said that there was a 5 stop difference between shadows (now zone 3) and
my highlights (now Zone 8) and I figured that I didn't need any contrast adjustments.

The end result was the picture above. It's obviously overexposed in the highlights but I'm happy with the shadow detail
on the bricks and the water and the underside of the bridge and the nice moody clouds. It seems my exposure calculations
were in the right ball park but I'm not sure about the cause of my error for the highlights. It's very probably that
they were actually brighter than my meter reading due to not having a 1 degree spot meter or not aiming it accurately -
you just point in the general direction with the L308. Other than that, have any of the assumptions or calculations I've
described above been incorrect, or were there any technical mistakes that you can spot? Is it the case that with long
exposures it's very difficult to not get blown highlights and I should have made a decision to lose some shadow detail?

[David Schaller]

Very good first effort! I would say that your spot meter was not precise enough for the highlight measurement, and probably picked up a lot of dark sky, which is why you thought there were only 5 stops difference, and your highlights are over exposed.

You might want to practice the zone system in daylight a bit to hone your skills.

I always apply the reciprocity correction to the metered shadow reading, before stopping down. So if it was 15 sec @ f4, then applied it would be 135 sec @ f4, then divide by 4 to stop down two stops for zone three. Then see where your highlights fall. Typically when you have long exposures, the highlights have to be calculated after you've made the reciprocity correction, and you often find that you need to do minus development.

[DennisD]

Welcome to the forum, MFOOT - that's a good beginning.

Glad to see you took careful notes. They provide important reference when using the zone system.

As mentioned by David Schaller above, it's really best to experiment with daytime exposures, especially for starting out using the zone system and testing. Dealing with reciprocity effects and adjusting development only adds variables that could create problems and confusion... especially if you don't have great familiarity with the film involved.

Have you done preliminary film testing for exposure index and film developing times ?
That's most important when getting started.

If you're serious about the zone system, a spot meter is necessary for the most part. It will enable you to be far more successful with subjects such as the bridge above. You will be able to get accurate spot readings of subject matter at a distance, landscapes, etc.

Until you get a meter you can experiment with the ZS by taking photographs of not so distant subjects. You will be able to physically get light readings of different values close up.

David's comment about determining reciprocity is wise. Also, your image might well have benefited from minus development.

Lastly, for nighttime shots like yours, consider using one of the compensating developers that would curb overdevelopment of highlights. Pyrocat HD is an example, but there are many others. That may also require some testing, but the results worthwhile. However, exposure control should be a priority.

Good wishes in your work.

[Michael W]

The end result was the picture above. It's obviously overexposed in the highlights but I'm happy with the shadow detail
on the bricks and the water and the underside of the bridge and the nice moody clouds. It seems my exposure calculations
were in the right ball park but I'm not sure about the cause of my error for the highlights. It's very probably that
they were actually brighter than my meter reading due to not having a 1 degree spot meter or not aiming it accurately -
you just point in the general direction with the L308. Other than that, have any of the assumptions or calculations I've
described above been incorrect, or were there any technical mistakes that you can spot? Is it the case that with long
exposures it's very difficult to not get blown highlights and I should have made a decision to lose some shadow detail?
Do you know that generally when you increase exposure for reciprocity that you should decrease developing time? Because the extra exposure is having a big effect on highlights. You might have to knock 20% or more off the dev time. Also it's worth noting that urban night photography typically has much higher contrast range scenes than most daytime scenes. So you need to think about how to reduce contrast. Compensating dev as suggested is one to consider. Ansel Adams recommended two bath devs for these scenarios. You will probably find the zone system chapter of his book The Negative quite useful. If that bridge is easily accessible I would suggest going back a couple more times, probably doing pretty much the same exposure but trying whatever dev ideas seem best to you, and I'd suspect that very soon you'd be getting much better results.

[Peter Mounier]

It's always hard to tell from an image posted on the web, but if you printed it about a stop darker it might be a much better print. The bridge lights don't look that overexposed or over developed to me. I see recoverable highlight detail in the tower. And the underside of the bridge can go to almost black and still show some depth and detail. You do want to see some detail in the shadows under the bridge, but the highlight detail is so much more important, and should really sing when it contrasts against the blackness under the bridge. If this is a scan from a neg I'd say that you can most likely improve the image in the scanning process. If it's a scan of a wet print then I'd recommend printing with a lower grade paper and printing it darker overall, then burn the edges to lighten the vignette (which looks about right).

It's easy being an armchair quarterback.

[ShannonG]

good start,,,general rule for me any way...expose for the shadow detail,process for the highlights,,,,,that can be as simple as metering the last shadow with detail,and placing it at zone 4,,your meter reads every thing at zone 5. (15%grey) so you can adjust from there.im a zone 4 meter guy, and adjust with development... good start,,,keep going,,,nice image

[sun of sand]

Have you made a wet print? Could just be the scan. You're used to it and I don't scan so no help given on that

It needs to be darker
Print for the highlights/maximum black in the rebate to tell for sure
I don't believe a simple invert of a scan gives a true representation
I'm also not sure that they're blown. Maybe.
Print it darker

[tgtaylor]

IMO you should reshoot when there are no clouds or fog in the sky to reflect the city light. I would want a black sky. To me the negative is overexposed. I would want a black water reflecting "silver" from the bridge/city. This is a crappy PnS digital shot of a salt print which illustrates what I am talking about:

http://spiritsofsilver.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/Port.58223548_large.jpg

Thomas

[ic-racer]

It's obviously overexposed in the highlights

I don't know what your scanner is doing; you probably need to ask this in the digital forum. In film photography one exposes to render adequate shadow detail on the negative. The highlights are printed as desired by altering the contrast of the printing paper. For exposed, but yet undeveloped films, one can use scene contrast to predict negative contrast and alter development based on empiric data obtained from testing.

[Cor]

If you re-shoot: check if your horizon is level, it seems that the bridge is leaning to the left (the scan is also not level judging by the rebate). A gridded ground glass is a big help in this. And judging from my screen: I think a fine print could be made in the darkroom, but it requires burning and playing around with grades.

Good luck,

Cor

[Bruce Watson]

Welcome to the Large Format Photography Forum! Always nice to have a new member.

The most common mistake photographers seem to make with reciprocity issues is thinking that the entire sheet of film undergoes reciprocity failure all at once. But that's not how it works. In fact, reciprocity failure only happens on the parts of the negatives that aren't receiving a sufficient number of photons to generate a latent image. Said another way, reciprocity failure occurs in the shadows (insufficient exposure) but it usually does not also occur in the highlights.

Unfortunately, there is no good way to give parts of the film more exposure and other parts less. There's only the one exposure. So when you give more exposure for the reciprocity failed areas of the film, you also give more exposure to the areas that don't need it. So you've overexposed the highlights. This you can compensate for by pulling development time. IOW Expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights. This rule always works.

Your Fomapan 200 film is a really old style film, which has quite poor reciprocity characteristics. You may be able to bend it to your advantage with a lot of experimentation and work. This will almost certainly be very frustrating. Which is perhaps why many photographers shooting night scenes like this will opt for a film with better reciprocity characteristics. The more modern t-grain films excel in night scenes like this, Fuji Acros being perhaps the best, with Kodak Tmax being right on its heels. Yes, they are more expensive. The question becomes: are the improved reciprocity characteristics worth the expense? You're the only one who can answer that question.

As to the Zone System and your meter. I don't understand how one can practice the Zone System without a one degree spot meter. People do, I just don't know how they do it. To me the most valuable tool I have is my Pentax digital spot meter. But maybe that's just me.

[Ken Lee]

If you are using a hybrid analog/digital approach, you should probably get a non-misleading scan of your negative before you draw any conclusions about exposure and development.

Since your scanned image shows the clear black film edge as a tone of gray - not black -you might find this article helpful: Scanning Tips (http://www.kenleegallery.com/html/tech/scanning.php).

Also, if you're new to the Zone System, you'll find it much easier to shoot subjects in ordinary lighting conditions until you've become more fully acquainted.

[Jerry Bodine]

If you re-shoot: check if your horizon is level, it seems that the bridge is leaning to the left (the scan is also not level judging by the rebate). A gridded ground glass is a big help in this. And judging from my screen: I think a fine print could be made in the darkroom, but it requires burning and playing around with grades.

I also notice the buildings in the background are leaning, indicating that you've pointed the camera upward affecting the bridge as well. This can be solved by leveling the camera so that the film plane is vertical (and leveled left to right) and then shifting the lens upward.

[mfoot]

Hello everybody and thanks a lot for all of your responses. There's a lot of useful information here and I wanted to
reply to as much of it as possible.

The image itself was meant to be a technical study rather than an artistic one. Several people have mentioned trying to
re-shoot the image after some more thought or study which I will definitely do. I had a lot of problems with the ground
glass pane being very dark and so I decided to get the framing as best I could but to focus more on getting a decent
exposure. I've read two good bits of advice on this other than buying a wider lens or brighter ground glass; use a laser
pointer (would probably get me arrested) or set up in the daytime and wait. Neither of these is ideal but I would be
happy to wait in general, circumstances permitting.

Some people mentioned gridded ground glass - mine actually is but it was either too dark or I didn't really think about
it. I'll pay more attention next time I'm out :)

To clarify exactly what is here, it's a scan of the negative rather than a wet print. While I do have two enlargers for
35mm I don't have access to a 4x5 enlarger yet. This may change in the next couple of weeks because I'm arranging some
darkroom access locally :). I'll try to address the comments and I think the best place to start is to discuss the
comments about the scan.


Since your scanned image shows the clear black film edge as a tone of gray - not black -you might
find this article helpful: Scanning Tips (http://www.kenleegallery.com/html/tech/scanning.php).

Thanks Ken and others for comments about scanning. I had another look at the negative with a loupe (just an inverted
50mm prime from an old 35mm Yashica) and the scan is definitely much lighter than the negative, or at least the dynamic
range is lower such that I can see more detail in the highlights when using the loupe. I will read the links provided
and have another go at seeing if I can coax more detail out of the scanner. I also very much want to try taking it to a
wet print. As such I can't really draw any conclusions yet from this scan.

Another broad category of responses was suggesting a better way to learn the Zone System would be to practice in the
daytime. I think this is always going to be a good idea - I just wanted to try out a night shot. I went on a small
camping weekend on the Isle of Wight and brought the camera around in my large backpack. I have about 12 negatives to
develop so when I have some time I'll process those based on the notes I've made and see if I do any better. I tried to
use the zone system in all of them and took notes so we will see how they turn out.


Have you done preliminary film testing for exposure index and film developing times ? That's
most important when getting started.

This is something I read about in Steve Simmons' book but haven't done yet. Fomapan definitely has a really bad
reciprocity failure but it's much cheaper than any other film I could find and comes in boxes of 50 instead of 10 or
25. I'll see if I can follow this process for a more accurate EI because I may learn I need to make additional
compensations during shooting. I figured it was better to buy more cheap film when learning so I can make mistakes that
aren't too costly.

As for comments on the spotmeter, I know I'll need to get a more accurate spot meter for landscape work. This would be
much better at letting me know if I need to use minus development or not. I will be actively looking for a decent spot
meter because I think it'll be very useful in the future. Does anybody have any recommendations?


I always apply the reciprocity correction to the metered shadow reading, before stopping
down. So if it was 15 sec @ f4, then applied it would be 135 sec @ f4, then divide by 4 to stop down two stops for zone
three. Then see where your highlights fall. Typically when you have long exposures, the highlights have to be
calculated after you've made the reciprocity correction, and you often find that you need to do minus
development.


Do you know that generally when you increase exposure for reciprocity that you should decrease
developing time? Because the extra exposure is having a big effect on highlights. You might have to knock 20% or more
off the dev time. Also it's worth noting that urban night photography typically has much higher contrast range scenes
than most daytime scenes. So you need to think about how to reduce contrast. Compensating dev as suggested is one to
consider. Ansel Adams recommended two bath devs for these scenarios. You will probably find the zone system chapter of
his book The Negative quite useful. If that bridge is easily accessible I would suggest going back a couple more times,
probably doing pretty much the same exposure but trying whatever dev ideas seem best to you, and I'd suspect that very
soon you'd be getting much better results.


Unfortunately, there is no good way to give parts of the film more exposure and other parts
less. There's only the one exposure. So when you give more exposure for the reciprocity failed areas of the film, you
also give more exposure to the areas that don't need it. So you've overexposed the highlights. This you can compensate
for by pulling development time. IOW Expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights. This rule always
works.

These are interesting and I'll keep them in mind for my next night shot. I was worried that I was going to completely
blow the highlights with such a long exposure. I recently picked up The Camera / The Negative / The Print at a
second-hand book store so I've been reading up and have some plans for my next shot. I think my main fear was not really
knowing how far I can get away with "develop for the highlights". More reading and testing is in order.

Thanks again to everybody who replied - I should have responded sooner but have been very busy.

Martin