Actual zone system

[Doremus Scudder]

For me, a "proper proof" is a must have tool because it enables me to easily see if anything wonky is happening in my processes.

Alan,

For me too. That said, teaching beginners how to make proper proofs involves a lot of discussion and practice about optimal lighting for viewing, just what "maximum paper black" is and how to know when you've reached it. etc. Much of the evaluation is really subjective and, if the evaluating conditions aren't correct, erroneous conclusions can be reached. In my first attempt to determine my personal E.I. using the proper-proof method (outlined by Minor White, et al., in "The New Zone System Manual), I evaluated my prints for the rebate reaching maximum paper black in full sunlight. My resulting E.I. was two full stops slower than ISO speed. I learned about "maximum paper black" very quickly! As well as to evaluate my proofs in "gallery lighting."

That was 40+ years ago. I still make proper proofs of every negative I make as both a check on my exposure and development and as a guide to starting contrast for printing. I recommend other darkroom printers do so. Still, it might be best not to include the proper proof in Zone System 101 - let's save it for the second semester

Doremus

[John Layton]

About the only thing I can think of to add to the above (for now)...is that once you've placed your shadow value on Zone III and thus have established a general exposure value for your photograph...go ahead and measure the brightest "highlight" value with you'd like rendered with some detail, and if this value falls between five and six stops above your shadow value, or between three and four stops above your general exposure value...you can process your film "normally" (as per standard development charts, etc.) as a good starting point.

But if the highlight value reads more than three three to four stops above your general exposure value, then you may need to cut your film developing time back a bit. Conversely, if the highlight reads only one or two stops above your general exposure value, you may need to add some time to film development.

Either one of these processing adjustments, if not done too drastically, will adjust the final highlight values in the negative, while leaving the shadows more or less alone...due to the fact that shadow values develop to completion more quickly than do highlight values. This property leads to the phrase "expose for the shadows...develop for the highlights."

Keep in mind that I've outlined very generally here...and that will likely need/want to tailor your own process based on your own results.

Now, there are other means of controlling range and contrast of values in your negative...like increasing or decreasing solution temperatures, increasing or decreasing the amount and/or "vigor" of agitation, changing developer dilution...etc. Each of these changes will have its own effect, and they all deserve playing around with at some point. But for now, best to stick with what many folks find to be the most straightforward adjustment...with is to simply increase or decrease development time as needed.

Edit: While variable contrast photographic papers indeed allow for a great deal of flexibility, and provide further opportunities to "fine tune" final results...my feeling has always been that its still best to not use these VC paper attributes to compensate for less than stellar negatives. In other words, do your best to get great negatives, which will help you to optimize your printed results to and to realize as much as possible of what your materials (and vision) are capable of! Good luck!

[Greg]

Back in the 1970s I was a student at The Rochester Institute of Technology. First using Minor White's testing , but then pursued the ZONE System under Nile Root and either T.L. Bollman or G.E. DeWolfe (forgot which). Recommend Arnold Gassan's book "handbook for Contemporary Photography: and Bollman & DeWolfe's "photography: CONTROL & CREATIVITY. Later on when Super-XX film was discontinued started to do the the ZONE tests as described in Beyond the Zone System by Phil Davis, but quickly reverted back to Bollman & DeWolfe's methods. Always as soon as I just barely finished the basic ZONE tests and calibrations, I followed Nile Root's advice and just went out there and shot. Resulting negatives were always better than using the manufactures recommendations, and making final prints was a joy.
Today when I shoot B&W, I use a very basic ZONE system... not wanting to redo all the testing and calibrations with my current materials, and rely on corrections made when printing. Works for me. Recently have been doing a lot of shooting with a vintage Kodak Box camera that takes 120 roll film. Minimal possible use of the ZONE system when shooting (only two f/stops and two shutter speed variables to use), but I really enjoy using the camera and corrections made when printing are a challenge I willfully pursue.
Good luck and just make sure to take a lot of notes...

[Drew Wiley]

There is no Actual Zone System. A number of options have been developed; and any common sense approach has to be malleable enough to fit specific users. One shoe size does not fit all. And the Zone System is not all that complicated, even though certain individuals have almost made an esoteric religion out of it. Nor do you need a lot of math beyond a what a good light meter does on its own. Think of it as a rubber band which can be stretched or contracted to fit your own needs. Common sense dictates you end up with a VERSATILE negative, not something so tight that it poses a problem if your favorite paper suddenly gets discontinued.

I learned it, and moved on. The Zone System is now in the rear-view mirror for me. My negatives do exactly what I want them to do. After awhile, with enough experience, it all gets intuitive.
And incidentally, I NEVER proof - never have and never will. But one thing I still do hold in common with many ZS practitioners is the preference for a true Spotmeter. And the central adage still holds true : Expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights.

[David Schaller]

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2385/...beb41d1232.jpg

goign by that the proper method would imply that when using a 400 iso film,

-set the camera meter or handheld unit to 250 iso,
- take a reading on what i want to be my Zone 3 shadow spot..
- increase the exposure by 2 stops
ie if meter says f/11 @ 1/15, change the camera settings to f/11 @1/60 and take my shot

-when roll is used up, develop at box speed of 400

That’s decreasing the exposure by two stops.

[Neal Chaves]

I just ran the tests described below. This time on HP5+ 120 film developed in Ilfotech HC 1:31 at 68*. The film was exposed on a bright clear day. I only tested down to 1/125 sec. , hand held in a Fuji GW690II camera, but I liked the 400 speed negative developed for 7:00 the best.

I have posted this many times in answer to the finding film speed question. No one has ever questioned the accuracy of this method, which Mortensen open sourced in the 1940s.

Years ago I learned an excellent method to find the correct developing time and EI for any film. I source was an article by William Mortensen. Mortensen wrote some excellent books and articles about basic sensitometry. The last time I did this test was when I abandoned Tri-X and switched to HP5+ due to cost about five years ago. I proceed as follows.

I set up my trays with my favorite developer HC110B (1:31), now Ilfotec HC (1:31). I pull out a sheet from the package in the dark. and then when the package is sealed again I turn on the room lights. This part of the test is done under the lights. I cut the sheet into five strips and mark them 1-5 by punching holes with a paper punch. Lets say the recommended time is 5:00. I want to see 3:00, 4:00, 5:00, 6:00 and 7:00, so I throw all the strips into the developer and agitate as usual until 3:00 when I move the No.1 strip over to the stop bath. Then I pull No.2 at 4:00, No.3 at 5:00, etc. I fix, wash and dry the strips as usual. What we are looking for is the best usable film DMax value. Obviously the film has been fully exposed! When strips dry lay down a page of news print on a table in good light. Find the strip through which the news print is barely visible. That's your developing time. Now to find the film speed.

Go outside in unchanging light conditions and expose five sheets and expose one at the manufacturers rating and then the other four at one half a stop and one stop less and one half a stop and one stop more. In the dark, develop them all together for your newly derived time. Contact print them together exposing and developing the paper for maximum usable paper DMax value through the film base plus fog negative rebate area. Pick out the best-looking contact print and you have your film speed.

Because my 7:00 negative looked the best on the first test, I did the test again with 7:00 as the central developing time and found that 8:00 was indeed too dense. This HP5+ time was the same as the as the developing time I had been using for Tri-X and film speed was also the same, EI400. I have also switched to Ilfotec HC developer due to cost and availability and find it to be a clone of HC110.

Many of the last generation of B&W gurus favored a development time of 5:00 for Tri-X and suggested an EI of 64-100. You can do the above test backwards, developing for 5:00 minutes and finding the film speed. I like 100. The difference between negatives exposed at 100 and developed for 5:00 and those exposed at 400 and developed for 7:00 is quite subtle. Both could be considered "normal" or N negatives. The 100 negative has slightly greater shadow and highlight detail that only a careful, knowledgeable viewer could detect. This slight improvement might not be worthwhile trading for two stops in the field. I do routinely rate HP5+ at 100 under powerful strobe light in the studio and it produces beautiful skin tones.

From here, if you are still with me, you can derive expansion and contraction schemes for both the 100 and 400 "normal negs". I do this by changing dilution rather than time. Make sure you have at least 1 oz. of the concentrated sauce for each 8X10 sheet or equivalent. For contractions I found that 3/4 oz. concentrate to 31 1/4 ozs. H20 yields an N-1 neg at a one stop loss in film speed and 1/2 oz. concentrate to 31 1/2 ozs. H20 yields an N-2 neg at a two stop loss in film speed. For expansions, 1 1/4 oz. of concentrate to 30 3/4 ozs. H20 yields an N+1 neg at a one stop gain in speed and 1 1/2 ozs. concentrate to 30 1/2 ozs. H20 produces an N+2 negative with a two stop gain in speed.

If you look at the chart of Tri-X film speed in Phil Davis' BTZS book you can easily pick out the film speed in HC110B 5:00 as EI 64.

Don't apply reciprocity exposure and development corrections for long exposures (1/2 sec. +) based on published data. Test for yourself and you may be surprised. I wasted a lot of time and effort producing long exposure negatives that were thick and flat. When I finally tested, I found no compensation was required for TXP or now HP5+ out to one minute.

[monochromeFan]

Alan,

For me too. That said, teaching beginners how to make proper proofs involves a lot of discussion and practice about optimal lighting for viewing, just what "maximum paper black" is and how to know when you've reached it. etc. Much of the evaluation is really subjective and, if the evaluating conditions aren't correct, erroneous conclusions can be reached. In my first attempt to determine my personal E.I. using the proper-proof method (outlined by Minor White, et al., in "The New Zone System Manual), I evaluated my prints for the rebate reaching maximum paper black in full sunlight. My resulting E.I. was two full stops slower than ISO speed. I learned about "maximum paper black" very quickly! As well as to evaluate my proofs in "gallery lighting."

That was 40+ years ago. I still make proper proofs of every negative I make as both a check on my exposure and development and as a guide to starting contrast for printing. I recommend other darkroom printers do so. Still, it might be best not to include the proper proof in Zone System 101 - let's save it for the second semester

Doremus

scudder you wrote the following..

Metering
If you have a spot meter or spot metering capabilities with your in-camera meter, choose a shadow value that you would like rendered as a "textured black" and place that in Zone III. Zone III is two stops less exposure that what the meter tells you (the meter always wants to expose at Zone V).

If you don't have spot metering capability, just go ahead and use your in-camera averaging meter. You can even use your camera on auto settings. When metering like this, you only have to watch out for situations that will fool the meter, especially very high-contrast scenes. For high-contrast scenes, give an extra stop of exposure. The same for high-key scenes (scenes with almost all high values, e.g., scenes with lots of snow or white sand).

That's it, and that's all I ever do with roll film as far as E.I. and metering goes.

Development
Develop your film using the manufacturer's recommended time for whatever developer you are using. This will get you in the ballpark. Don't worry about adjusting development for different contrasts and different scenes; with roll film you're only looking for a good "Normal" development time.
(By the way, reducing development by 15% for each stop of adjustment is not applicable here; it's about finding N- times. Worry about that when you start using sheet film, or not at all.) Note that there's no such thing as "Developing for Zone V." "Normal" development is what gives you the right contrast for normal scenes; the manufacturers' recommendations for film-developing time is designed to give "Normal" contrast, or very close to it.


if i understand correctly, the 2 stops LESS exposure means that once my meter says the intended Zone 3 area is say f/16 @ 1/15 i need to give it LESS exposure meaning I would reduce the shutter speed to 1/60 for the two stop difference between the meters built in Zone 5 average and my intentional Zone 3.

The film developing is a question as, in the roger loew video i saw, he reduced development by 15% for every stop he reduced. He also showed negatives form a roll of film he took by simply taking a meter reading on a grey card on his rough area he wanted as Zone 3, he developed normally, he also shot the film at box speed.

[bmikiten]

FWIW - The BTZS methods as we taught it at workshops took less than a day to complete. We would have the class in the morning the expose step wedges, process film then have plotted results by dinner time. It gives you all the data for a film and developer combination in a few hours. Paper is very fast as well. When Phil and I were working on a new developer, he would run 4-5 tests a day. Of course, that was Phil.

[Peter De Smidt]

Just do what Doremus has outlined. Don't worry about changing your development times, once you have your standard time. Consistency is key. Get lots of practice doing things "normally". Later on you can get more complicated (if you really want to).

[monochromeFan]

its going to be a while before i can take a camera outside.... i havent taken one outside in under 30* before and wasnt to happy with how they behaved. 10* and a windchill beloe 0* aint going to be good, for nothing.