Ansels The Negative

[Tim Meisburger]

Assuming the Zone System is makes complete sense, The Negative isn’t a difficult book at all. I don’t get why people make it out to be complicated. It does contain some incorrect information about meters and other things but the concepts are simple - simple enough that the whole thing really needs little more than a few pages. If you don’t get it, dispense with it. You’ll get basically the same results either way.

I agree. People used to say it was complicated, but when I finally read it I found it quite simple, if a little dry. He was a very famous teacher, so you would expect his text to be clear. I gained a lot of foundational knowledge from his books.

[Mark Sawyer]

The grey card now looks black since the exposure reading from the reflected light meter errs to underexposure, since it's reading a lot of the bright white adobe wall...

That's why people using the Zone System use spot-meters.

[monochromeFan]

5. the checker board,,, here is cut and copy

onsider as an example a large checkerboard pattern of black and
whit e squares. If the checkerboard has the same numbe r of light and
dark squares, a general meter reading will give about the right exposure setting to record it as whit e and black areas. If, however, the
surface is predominantly black with only a few whit e squares, we
will get a different average reading from it, since it will appear to the
mete r as a "darker " subject; an average reading will thus indicate
more exposure required. Conversely if the surface contains mostly
whit e with only a few black squares, the meter will indicate a higher
average luminanc e level and less exposure required. Th e problem
that arises is that, in photographing each of the three checkerboard
arrangements we would usually want the black areas to appear black
in the final print and the white areas white. Only one of the three
exposure readings — the one from the norma l checkerboard — will
provide an exposure setting that is appropriate to achieve tha t result.
To repeat: the meter assumes it is reading an average subject, as it
was in the case of the normal checkerboard. When the distribution
of light and dark areas is not average, the meter has no way, in itself,
to compensate

Not something I have ever seen before, not even in the MANUAL for my light meter

[notorius]

5. the checker board,,, here is cut and copy

onsider as an example a large checkerboard pattern of black and
whit e squares. If the checkerboard has the same numbe r of light and
dark squares, a general meter reading will give about the right exposure setting to record it as whit e and black areas. If, however, the
surface is predominantly black with only a few whit e squares, we
will get a different average reading from it, since it will appear to the
mete r as a "darker " subject; an average reading will thus indicate
more exposure required. Conversely if the surface contains mostly
whit e with only a few black squares, the meter will indicate a higher
average luminanc e level and less exposure required. Th e problem
that arises is that, in photographing each of the three checkerboard
arrangements we would usually want the black areas to appear black
in the final print and the white areas white. Only one of the three
exposure readings — the one from the norma l checkerboard — will
provide an exposure setting that is appropriate to achieve tha t result.
To repeat: the meter assumes it is reading an average subject, as it
was in the case of the normal checkerboard. When the distribution
of light and dark areas is not average, the meter has no way, in itself,
to compensate

Not something I have ever seen before, not even in the MANUAL for my light meter

I am not sure If I can see what you seem to not understand here. This is really the basics of exponometry to the very core. Any lightmeter is calibrated to "see" average middle gray and tend to give you "wrong" results when metering a scene which tends be darker/brighter than average. This applies to reflected metering everytime. If you want to get correct exposure, you have to compensate or use incident metering. That is the easier way. The other is spot metering, which will give you full control.

[jnantz]

I am not sure If I can see what you seem to not understand here. This is really the basics of exponometry to the very core. Any lightmeter is calibrated to "see" average middle gray and tend to give you "wrong" results when metering a scene which tends be darker/brighter than average. This applies to reflected metering everytime. If you want to get correct exposure, you have to compensate or use incident metering. That is the easier way. The other is spot metering, which will give you full control.

Exactly.. I just recently helped restore what seemed to be 35mm p/s prints taken in the Middle East30-35 years ago .. extremely bright and the average ambient meter obviously didn’t allow for any manual over ride to compensate for the wrong reading. the resulting original prints looked OK for what they were. my friend told me it was all kodak color print film. beautiful combination of soft muted almost pastel, bright colors and wicked almost runaway contrast, I've never seen/worked on anything like it. Probably could have used an extra 2 or 3 stops at the shooting stage but kodak knew that that's why consumer print film is almost fool proof. Us manual lens manual meter manual development don’t know how good we got it….

[j.e.simmons]

That's why I began using an incident meter.

[John Layton]

...methinks the skeptic is becoming unmasked, and will soon truly be able to see (and judge) the light!

[Michael R]

I think OP should read a basic photo technique book. There are a few decent ones. I mean basic stuff (ie 99.x% of what is ever needed), not Zone System or the myriad of gobbledygook nonsense books that came after. Even something like Kodak's Basic Sensitometry Workbook might be beneficial (in fact that would have done many people some good).

Properly exposing and developing film is not complicated stuff. It just isn't. Especially if one were to learn at the outset that "control" of negatives is largely a zero-sum, and that the way great prints are made is instead by working on printing, which is where the real control and skills/techniques come into play.

If one then wants to go deeper into exposure and/or tone reproduction theory, that's interesting/enlightening too (Zone System is not good for this either).

[djdister]

When I was attending RIT in the late 70's, they did not teach the zone system, and we did not use Ansel's books as our textbooks. And looking [way] back, I would not tell anyone to start with Ansel's books...

[John Layton]

I think it was 1990 or thereabouts...I had my Basic Photo students outdoors near the photo lab, each equipped with a light meter and gray card.

What I had not predicted was that results were all over the map...with my students left skeptically scratching their collective scalps - and eyeing me with some suspicion.

Turned out that it was a sunny day...and those gray cards (photo dept. budgets being almost nonexistent) were very cheap - and "shiny" enough that they could actually be quite "specular" if you get my drift.

Lesson learned, next session I brought my "personal" gray card in to class - which I believe was called "The Last Gray Card" (made by Beseler I think) - which was quite bombproof and had a truly nice matte surface. At any rate...this gave me a "teachable moment" after which I was so very fortunate to have regained the class' trust and confidence!