Exposing a gray scale for Zone System calibration

[TroyG]

Thank you for your constructive and helpful comments! I did not know about the existence of Stouffer scales existed! I think I'll try that route just for economy and not blowing through so many sheets of film just to build a zone system ruler. I know to calibrate my film speed and normal development time first, I just wanted to have a very clear sense of every step because I need to plan this all around trips to the darkroom, which is close to an hour drive away! I am going to do my calibration process based off of "Zone System: Step by step guide" by Brian Lav. I find the way he lays out the calibration processes themselves to be the easiest and most straightforward.

As of now, I have it down to four darkroom visits (hopefully). The hopefully part is that because the darkroom is not near me some of the "try it and see" type steps wont work. Most of that is the normal development test.I want to develop all the film at home (where I will be normally) so that the water temperature and quality is the same. If anyone wouldn't mind looking over my "zone system itinerary", I would very much appreciate it!

Step 1) Expose 8 sheets of film. Bracket in half stop increments from zone 0 to zone II. Leave one she Develop normally.
Step 2) Go to darkroom. Determine SCT by printing a gray scale through the blank sheet of film.
Step 3) Contact print my bracketed exposures at SCT and determine which one is the proper zone I
Step 4) Go home and shoot a gray card, expose at zone V. Develop one at box time, one 20% longer, one 20% less time.
Step 5) Go back to darkroom and contact print at SCT and see which one matches a gray card. Thats normal development time. Hopefully one of them is right, or at least close!
Step 6) Go home, shoot a fancy stouffer chart, develop normally, go to darkroom and contact print that shot.

Then I have achieved my personal zone system ruler, ya?
Any wisdom is appreciated!

[Kevin J. Kolosky]

I own and have read Mr. Lav's book. Looks like a good way to go.
But you could save yourself some time and film but taking a black card, setting it up on the shady side of a building, metering it for zone 1 at the indicated ISO of your film, shooting it, developing it for the recommended time and temp for your developer, and then reading it on a densitometer to see how close it comes to .10 density over film base plus fog. That way you will know whether you need to either give more exposure or less by altering your ISO. Once you get that on the money you can use the corrected ISO to meter and shoot a gray card in that same shade. Develop it and read it. Should be close to about .65 or so. If not, alter the development either way until you get there.

[TroyG]

Kevin, thank you for your reply! That does sound like it would save on my shotgun approach but I do not own a densitometer. I wouldn't know where to start with obtaining or using one either!

[Bill Burk]

Sounds like 1-5 are right from the book, a good deal of work, but you will probably get a good understanding from following a book you trust.

The T2115 21 step Stouffer scale would be used for a test series to replace all those steps, not something to follow-up with.

But for seven bucks, you should get one anyway and place it next to your negatives when you make contact prints. A Stouffer scale can work like a densitometer. You look for grays in the print that match the number... and since each number is a certain density... that part of your negative would be "that" density.

[Pere Casals]

The Zone System today is a wasteful distraction

Possibly, once you fully understand it and have practiced it enough to be sure of that. As a step up from taking a light meter reading and exposing at box speed, however, it has served generations of self- and professionally-taught photographers. Sure, eventually it starts to look like applied sensitometry with hard lessons about process control, but there are reasons why it was introduced so long ago and is still around today.

I Fully agree. At the end film photography is exactly explained by sensitometry graphs, and IMHO, Zone System is a sound way to predict results, or to select an exposure and a development.

By viewing AA prints... no one can say ZS has a flaw !!!

But it is also true that there are advanced concepts to manipulate tonality with CRM/SCIM etc masks, for example. Also split grade printing allows to burn with a different contrast grade...

IMHO ZS is an excellent way to get he core concepts, then IMHO its is useful to read books like Beyond The Zone System and Way Beyond Monochrome.

[esearing]

One thing ZS doesn't seem to teach (or perhaps I have missed it) is how to treat scenes of mostly bright tones or mostly dark tones. Example: Meter some light rocks and a bit of bright southern sky at EV 11-16. Now where do we place this on the Zone System?

Traditionally I would place EV 11 on Zone III and let the sky fall on Zone VIII. This would give me a decent print but might be a bit darker than what my eyes actually saw. I would have to resort to some split grade printing to reduce contrast and print a bit brighter.

These days I want the light areas to be lighter when printed so I would set the EV 11 at Zone VI and EV 16 will fall at zone XI, which would require me to compress the negative so that my highlights fall back to zone VIII without moving the mid tones much. So I end up with a negative that is now zones 4.5-5 through Zone 8-8.5 (+or-), a little flatter, but can still be expanded with MG filters as needed.

Where I'm still struggling is scenes with many dark tones such as heavily forested areas surrounding a sunlit waterfall. I want texture/branch details in the shadows but still want them dark and do not want to blowout the light on the water. Usually only 6-7 stops EV but placement requires some guessing and experimentation for arriving at the right compression (or not).

Trying different papers is making me work harder to find my "perfect negative" too. Ilford MGFB Art is much different than MGFBClassic and MGFBWT in tone, texture, and contrast. Not to mention it responds differently to filters and exposure time in the enlarger.

But the Zone system does give me a method to think about tonalities of scene, negatives, and paper that help me make adjustments. The Nerd side of me wants a densiometer.

[TroyG]

Bill, Chapter 8 of Mr. Lav's book suggested that you produce your own gray scale as a final test of your process. I ordered a scale and then by shooting it and developing it my print of the scale should match the scale. I would like the final confirmation that I did everything right!

esearing, have you read "The Art Of Photography" by Bruce Barnbaum? He goes much in depth of maintaining detail in your dark scenes while maintaining highlights. He shot a lot of English Cathedrals which is a lot like your dark forest with a sunlit waterfall as far as dynamic range. Bruce suggests placing shadows higher on the scale since your negative will maintain detail well past zone X. He uses a special compensated developing as well to compress the negative. Then you can always print down and employ Dodging/burning to fine tune your tonalities.

What Bruce tries to convey is that the 10-stop range of the "the zone system" is print based. Your NEGATIVE, however, has a much MUCH larger range to maintain detail. Its just a matter of getting that to end up on paper.

[Pere Casals]

One thing ZS doesn't seem to teach (or perhaps I have missed it) is how to treat scenes of mostly bright tones or mostly dark tones.

Of course ZS is not to tell you in what Zone you should place an scene area, this is your decission.

What ZS tells is what will happen if you place an area of the scene in an exposure Zone. (... Z-IV you conserve detail, but absolutely no detail in Z-0.)

The other important thing ZS tells is that by underdeveloping or by overdeveloping you can get a suitable amount of contrast to print without great complications

At the end ZS is about spot metering, if one wants to meter in a different way (incident light metering...) then other practical rules have to be used.

[Kevin J. Kolosky]

Kevin, thank you for your reply! That does sound like it would save on my shotgun approach but I do not own a densitometer. I wouldn't know where to start with obtaining or using one either!

I own one. send the negs to me and I will read them for you.

And by the way, you don't need to call it the zone system. You can call it the find my correct ISO and development time and develop more or less depending on the contrast of the scene system.

[Bill Burk]

Sounds like you expect the scale to match the print... Don't expect that.

But don't sweat it. Just do the tests and come to your own understanding.

Sounds like you ordered a cameraman's gray scale. That scale only matches the scale of a print in a flat-copy scenario. It has about 5 stops of range, from black to white. A real picture has more like 7 stops of subject luminance range, there's 5 stops from black to white of everything in the sun, plus there's a couple more stops of darker subject in the shade... So when you print a full range 7 stop picture it will compress to 5 stops on the print. Black on the cameraman scale in sun will be a dark gray on the print (with some things darker still on the print) and 18% gray will rise in value a bit because of the "distortion" of tones necessary to fit your full scale negative on the print...