Grey card wrong?

[Drew Wiley]

With black and white technique, you basically set your own standards of what is workable. There is nothing absolute about Zone system placements. You tailor them
to your own needs. Color photography, esp with chromes, tends to be more specific, but even then its's more important to be spontaneously comfortable with your
chosen meter technique than to make a religion out of this.

[ROL]

What Sandy said. I for one am eternally grateful for his clear explanation of these principles.

Here's a sample photo where I just took one incident reading of my own shadow, shot the scene, and went home. (It took a while to get confident about this approach, but I rarely use my spot meter any more.)

Although I go way back with the Zone System, I didn't bother to check the clouds or the values of the rocks, sand, water etc. Besides, which rocks should be on which Zone anyhow ?

With all due respect, and appreciating the fact that you've posted a fine example image, I don't see a lot of shadow detail in large parts of the image. Maybe that is what you intended, but your last statement about not bothering to check important values when you were using it seems to indicate that you weren't fully utilizing the ZS as designed for fine art B/W expression. "which rocks..." indeed – that's the point of using a spot meter with the ZS. Often it is unnecessary to use targeted metering, particularly in wide landscape compositions where incident metering is sufficient, but it can really save your bacon and keep your visualization on task in difficult lighting.

[Drew Wiley]

Nuances aren't something conveyed very well on the web, so I'll withhold my opinion of what might or might not be on that negative.

[Leigh]

With black and white technique, you basically set your own standards of what is workable.
There is nothing absolute about Zone system placements. You tailor them to your own needs.

Exactly.

- Leigh

[djdister]

With all due respect, and appreciating the fact that you've posted a fine example image, I don't see a lot of shadow detail in large parts of the image. Maybe that is what you intended, but your last statement about not bothering to check important values when you were using it seems to indicate that you weren't fully utilizing the ZS as designed for fine art B/W expression. "which rocks..." indeed – that's the point of using a spot meter with the ZS. Often it is unnecessary to use targeted metering, particularly in wide landscape compositions where incident metering is sufficient, but it can really save your bacon and keep your visualization on task in difficult lighting.

I don't know, I can see at least four zones in just the rock areas, and if I saw a print I could probably make out 5 different zones in the rocks alone. It is quite possible that in the time spent and analyzing spotmetering zones 1, 2 and 3 in the rock areas, the light would be gone...

[Drew Wiley]

Spotmetering shadow situations like that takes about three seconds.

[djdister]

Spotmetering shadow situations like that takes about three seconds.

And how would the end result have turned out better?

[Drew Wiley]

Because I know, almost instantly, exactly where a specific spot of shadow will fall on the scale in relation to the other key values. The little EV scale on the top of
a Pentax spotmeter is very very convenient for such assessments. There's a reason it's such a popular tool around here.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly.

- Leigh

Which is precisely where the artistive/creative side of photography begins. Perfect technique only gets you to a technically perfect image. Which could be deadly boring, like a player piano. Or could be incredibly moving as a technically perfect image with a unique creative vision. Knowing where the individual tones read on the meter, then choosing how they will render on film, and subsequently in a print, is very powerful for those with a creativite vision. Of course if one has no artistic vision, then they can settle for a technically perfect print that says nothings and moves no-one to feel anything.

Mastering technique is very important, but not an end to itself. Mastering technique so that it becomes instinctive, frees the creative right side of the brain to dominate and that's when the real photography begins.

[Bill Burk]

Ken Lee and Kirk Gittings, your two examples are beautiful and I find it interesting that they almost "tell" of the metering that you did.

Perhaps it's because you selected them to illustrate the statement you were making, but they both fit their descriptions well.

Ken yours evokes the mood of Garrapata Beach by Brett Weston with its stark shadows and bright wet highlights. Kirk, yours evokes the mood of your lightning shot (I don't know exactly how but I suppose that means it's recognizably yours). I don't know how an incident meter would work in that situation. Neither foreground nor cliffs are illuminated same as you.

I prefer to practice all the kinds of metering because I enjoy the journey, and I'll use whatever I have on hand. I am sure I can make anything work, and I am always grateful for the tolerance. But Kirk, yours is the kind of problem that probably is best met with a spotmeter.